Rubar Sandi, chief executive of the Washington-based CorporateBank Business Group, complains to the Washington Times that the Coalition Provision Authority (CPA), formerly known as Pentagon’s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs, is an obstacle to those trying to do business in Iraq. “In 10 days, I managed to do more than ORHA has done in two months. ORHA is a stumbling block,” he tells the newspaper. Sandi, an Iraqi exile, adds that the CPA blocked his efforts to start a telecommunications business in Iraq. [Washington Times, 6/17/2003]

After seeing photos of the trailers hailed by the CIA as evidence of an Iraqi biological weapons program, former UN weapons inspector Rod Barton tells the Australian government that US intelligence has wrongly concluded that the vessels in the trailers are biological fermenters. [Associated Press, 5/13/2006]

Hamid Bayati, spokesperson for the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), tells the Washington Post: “If [Bremer] is going to appoint an administration, we can’t be part of that. We will only be part of an administration selected by the Iraqi people. There are certain lines which we cannot cross.” [Washington Post, 6/8/2003]

Isam Khafaji, an Iraqi exile who returned to Iraq to serve on the Defense Department’s Iraq Reconstruction and Development Council, complains to the Washington Post: “Our role is very limited. We’re not allowed to make any decisions.” [Washington Post, 6/8/2003]

Several newspapers report that a number of US and British intelligence experts do not believe that the two trailers recently found in Iraq (see April 19, 2003; May 9, 2003) are mobile biological weapons factories. According to the London Observer, experts believe the trailers were probably “designed to be used for hydrogen production to fill artillery balloons.” The newspaper also reports that the Iraqi army purchased its original hydrogen producing system, known as an Artillery Meteorological System, in 1987 from the British-owned Marconi Command & Control. [Observer, 6/8/2003] The experts offer the following reasons for why they do not believe the trailers were intended to produce biological weapons: No trace of pathogens are detected in the trailers’ suspected fermentation tanks. [Observer, 6/8/2003] The trailers have canvas sides which would not have made sense if they were meant to be used as biological weapon labs. [Observer, 6/8/2003] “The canvas tarps covering the sides of the trucks appeared designed to be pulled away to let excess heat and gas escape during the production of hydrogen. The tarps would allow in far too much road dust and other contamination if the equipment inside were meant to produce biowarfare agents.” [Los Angeles Times, 6/21/2003] There is a “shortage of pumps required to create vacuum conditions required for working with germ cultures and other processes usually associated with making biological weapons.” [Observer, 6/8/2003] The trailers have no “autoclave for steam sterilization, normally a prerequisite for any kind of biological production.” Without a means to sterilize “between production runs would threaten to let in germ contaminants, resulting in failed weapons.” [New York Times, 6/7/2003; Observer, 6/8/2003] There is no “easy way for technicians to remove germ fluids from the processing tank.” [New York Times, 6/7/2003; Observer, 6/8/2003]

Paul Bremer approves a plan to recruit as many as 6,600 police advisers to help build and train an indigenous police force of 50,000 to 80,000 Iraqis from scratch. DynCorp—which received a $22 million contract to establish a criminal justice system a few months earlier (see Early 2003)—is to recruit police trainers from the US and various foreign countries. But over the next six months, only 50 police advisers will arrive in the country. A State Department official will later blame this failure on the program being insufficiently funded. [New York Times, 5/21/2006]

Carl Ford Jr. [Source: PBS]Carl Ford Jr., head of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, authors a classified memo addressed to Colin Powell, informing him that current intelligence does not support the conclusion of the joint CIA-DIA May 28 white paper (see May 28, 2003) which concluded that the two trailers found in Iraq (see April 19, 2003 and May 9, 2003) were mobile biological weapon factories. The memo also says that the CIA and DIA were wrong in asserting that there were no other plausible uses for the trailer, suggesting that the two pieces of equipment may have been designed for refueling Iraqi missiles. [New York Times, 6/26/2003; Fox News, 6/26/2003; CBS News, 6/27/2003]

Mahdi Obeidi, the Iraqi nuclear scientist who once headed Iraq’s gas centrifuge program for uranium enrichment, leads US investigators to the rose garden behind his house where they dig up “200 blueprints of gas centrifuge components, 180 documents describing their use and samples of a few sensitive parts.” These items had been buried under orders from Qusay Hussein in 1991. (see February 5, 2004). [CNN, 6/26/2003; Newsweek, 8/8/2003; Washington Post, 10/26/2003Sources:David Albright]

Speaking on CNBC’s Capital Report, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says the trailers recently discovered in Iraq (see April 19, 2003; May 9, 2003) were designed to produce biological weapons. “But let’s remember what we’ve already found. Secretary Powell on February 5 (see February 5, 2003) talked about a mobile, biological weapons capability. That has now been found and this is a weapons laboratory trailers capable of making a lot of agent that—dry agent, dry biological agent that can kill a lot of people. So we are finding these pieces that were described… We know that these trailers look exactly like what was described to us by multiple sources as the capabilities for building or for making biological agents. We know that we have from multiple sources who told us that then and sources who have confirmed it now. Now the Iraqis were not stupid about this. They were able to conceal a lot. They’ve been able to scrub things down. But I think when the whole picture comes out, we will see that this was an active program.” [CNBC, 6/3/2003; US House Committee on Government Reform, 3/16/2004]

President Bush visits US CENTCOM headquarters in Doha, Qatar. One of the pressing issues on his mind is the continued failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. As Time magazine later recounts the visit, Bush, meeting with the various generals in charge of the US forces, “skip[s] quickly past the niceties” and begins asking about WMD. No one answers. “Are you in charge of finding WMD?” he asks L. Paul Bremer, the newly installed head of the US civilian-led government (see May 1, 2003). Bremer says no, and a clearly exasperated Bush asks the same question of General Tommy Franks, head of CENTCOM. Franks also denies responsibility. Finally, someone names the Washington official in charge of finding WMD: Defense Department aide Stephen Cambone. “Who?” Bush asks. [Rich, 2006, pp. 96]

Paul Bremer, US administrator for Iraq, signs Order 12, suspending all trade restrictions such as tariffs and customs duties until December 31, 2003. [Coalition Provisional Authority, 6/7/2003 ] The policy is expected to have a negative impact on Iraq’s economy. In 2002, the gross domestic product (GDP) of Iraq was $25 billion. In 2003, it is expected to be $15 billion. Iraqi manufacturers complain that after 12 years of strangulation by UN sanctions they are nowhere near ready to compete with cheap foreign imports. A month after Bremer’s order, the San Francisco Chronicle will report that textile plants and clothing factories are being devastated by clothing from China. And chicken legs dumped on the Iraqi market by the American company Tyson will force Al-Helli Chicken Co., a former major chicken butcher, to lay off all but 20 of the firm’s 140 workers. [San Francisco Chronicle, 7/10/2003] The move also reportedly leads disgruntled Iraqi businessmen and manufacturers to begin funding the insurgency. [Harper's, 9/24/2004]

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, says: “We are confident that we—I believe that we will find [weapons of mass destruction in Iraq]. I think that we have already found important clues like the biological weapons laboratories that look surprisingly like what Colin Powell described in his speech (see February 5, 2003).” [Meet the Press, 6/8/2003; American Forces Press Service, 6/9/2003]

Journalist Russell Mokhiber asks White House press secretary Ari Fleischer: “You said in April that the war was about weapons of mass destruction (see April 10, 2003). The war resulted in thousands of innocent civilian deaths.… Do you personally feel any remorse given the public case that is being made that this war was based on that false pretext?” Fleischer responds with an assertion about Iraq being safer because of the removal of a brutal tyrant: “Number one, you have no basis to say that it is a false pretext. Number two, when you take a look at the mass graves that have been discovered all around Iraq, I think that world breathes a sign of relief that the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, with no regard to human rights, was removed from power so that the Iraqi people can at long last have a life to build a future that is based on freedom and opportunity and not on tyranny.” Mokhiber redirects Fleischer back onto the topic of WMD, noting, “But you said the war was based on weapons of mass destruction.” Fleischer says, “That still stands, per earlier in the conversation.” [US Department of State, 6/9/2003; CommonDreams, 6/9/2003]

US forces in Iraq launch Operation Peninsula Strike, conducting a series of raids on a peninsula along the Tigris River about 35 miles north of Baghdad, near the towns of Balad and Duluiya. The sweep, aimed at suppressing the growing Iraqi resistance, is the Coalition’s largest military operation since the regime’s collapse (see April 9, 2003). About 4,000 US troops—supported by river patrol boats and AC-130 gunships—participate in the assault. Up to 100 Iraqis are killed and 397 are taken prisoner. [BBC, 6/13/2003; Guardian, 6/13/2003] Residents of the towns complain that the US’s heavy handed tactics are alienating the Iraqi populace and creating popular support for the insurgency. One Iraqi is quoted as saying, “There was no fighting in a town like Falluja during the war. That only came when American soldiers killed 18 people during a protest. The people who are fighting the Americans are only taking personal action to avenge the murders of their family members.” [The Irish Times, 6/14/2003]

Administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer issues Regulation Number 2, which
governs how the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) will manage the Development Fund for Iraq. The regulation states that the funds will be “managed in a transparent manner for and on behalf of the Iraqi people, consistent with [UN Security Council] Resolution 1483 (see May 22, 2003), and that all disbursements from the Fund are for purposes benefiting the people of Iraq.” It also says that the CPA will “obtain the services of an independent, certified public accounting firm” to audit the fund’s management. [Coalition Provisional Authority, 6/10/2003 ]

A panel from the ancient and priceless ‘Treasure of Nimrod,’ originally believed to be stolen but later restored to the National Museum. [Source: Zeenaraqi (.com)]UPI columnist John Bloom delves into the mystery of the looted antiquties from Baghdad’s National Museum. Curators and archaologists report over 170,000 antiquties and artifacts either stolen or destroyed, and massive damage done to the building itself (see April 8-12, 2003 and April 13, 2003). On the other hand, General William Wallace has claimed that “as few as 17 items were unaccounted for” (see May 7, 2003). After some research, Bloom claims that virtually everyone involved in the affair is lying to some degree, and, he writes, “the reporters on the scene have been played for patsies.” Mystery Man - Apparently, Bloom finds, the controversy centers on Donny George, who is officially the director general of research and study for the State Board of Antiquities. George is not the director of the museum; that position is filled by Dr. Jaber Khalil, who “is never quoted in Western news accounts,” Bloom reports. Instead, George became the museum spokesman early in the occupation. He is also a liar, according to Bloom. Reporters say that George gave them the 170,000 figure on or around April 13. George says he never made such a claim. There were 170,000 pieces in the entire collection, he says, but he has no idea how many were stolen or vandalized. The story has become politicized, Bloom writes, somewhat in the US and far more so in Britain, where war critics have seized on the story as evidence of the lack of respect the Pentagon has for the culture of a nation it has seized. The Pentagon calls the museum a military outpost for Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, and its pillaging an understandable reaction from the Iraqi people who hated Hussein and his Ba’athist thugs. After the April looting, archaeological expert Dan Cruikshank, who works for the BBC, attempted to piece together a picture of what exactly was and was not taken. He divided the museum into three main areas: The galleries themselves. Most of the looting and vandalism took place here. But the galleries had been cleared of much of their valuables. Curators had been planning for this months in advance, having gone through looting after the 1991 Gulf War. They feared both citizen thieves and vengeful Kuwaitis traveling with the US troops. They hid the smaller items, leaving behind only antiquities that could not be stolen without mechanical equipment. Somewhere between 17 and 50 major items were either stolen or vandalized; another 15 items sustained major damage. The museum offices and conservation rooms, where the safes, keys, and equipment are kept. These areas were heavily looted, but mostly of modern equipment such as computers, fax machines, and copiers. Five secret storerooms known only to the curators. These are reinforced, locked vaults located in various places throughout the museum. Here is where most of the museum’s treasures were hidden away. Experts who visited the museum after the April looting found that three had not been opened, including one room stuffed with tens of thousands of Greek and Roman gold coins. One had been opened with a key, indicating an inside job. The fifth had been broken into and some items stolen. Squirreled Away - George was one of the first and loudest of lamenters on April 13, blaming US soldiers for their indifference and lamenting the museum that had been, in Bloom’s description, “overrun by a ravenous horde.” However, George kept a few facts to himself. One, he put the most prized possessions of the museum into a secret vault; only George himself knows where that vault is. Two, many museum staff members took items home to protect them. Three, most of the gold items, including 600 historically priceless pieces of jewelry from the Treasure of Nimrod, are safe in a vault underneath the Iraqi Central Bank. They have been there since the days of the Iran-Iraq war. Four, at least one of the secret storerooms was found to have housed not only antiquities, but parts of a machine gun, an unexploded hand grenade, and a rocket-propelled grenade. The room itself has slit windows giving an excellent field of fire for the street below. This discovery gives some truth to the Army’s contention that its soldiers had taken fire from the museum. Playing Both Sides - Bloom moves into the realm of admitted speculation in trying to divine George’s underlying motivation. He believes George, who held high rank in the Ba’athist regime, wanted to play his cards close to his chest until he could be sure how everything was going to settle out, not offending either the US occupiers or the Ba’athists, who might, as happened in 1991, end up remaining in power. He also believes George wanted to protect valuable artifacts that had disappeared from the museum long before the war. He wonders if George was collaborating with Saddam Hussein, defending the museum against the depredations of the notoriously rapacious Hussein family (who had no compunctions about selling treasures on the international market), or perhaps both. Planned Burglary - Bloom and Cruikshank both believe that during the April 12 looting, the same people who plundered the museum in years past came back to steal one more time. Five of the most valuable items were snatched, smuggled out of the country apparently through Damascus, Syria, and sold on the black market in Tehran and Paris. Bloom writes: “That’s what stolen-to-order means. They had lined up buyers in Europe long before the war broke out.” Bloom and Cruikshank also cannot figure out how two of the most valuable artifacts—a 4,500-year-old alabaster relief vase and a 4,250-year-old bronze statue—were stolen. “It would have taken, at the least, a block and tackle, a hoist, and a pickup to get them out of the museum.” Did no one see any of this? Bloom asks. Real Losses - It seems clear that several thousand antiquities and valuables were indeed looted. The latest figure, from UNESCO and the US Customs Service, hovers around 2,000 to 3,000, notwithstanding the claims of General Wallace. Bloom notes, “Even if the losses are limited to 50 priceless items and 3,000 lesser items, that’s still the most significant robbery of antiquities in living memory.” John Russell of the Massachusetts College of Art said in late May: “It’s only by comparison with the most dire initial reports that said everything was gone that it seems not so bad. Yes, not everything is gone, but major things are.” Other sites suffered worse depredations—the archaelogical digs at Larsa, Nineveh, Hatra, Mosul, Babylon, and the Sumerian city of Umma, among others. Bloom writes: “Lost in all the claims and counter-claims about who was responsible, who was lying, and what was done or not done, was the fact that the whole affair was based on a libel against the Iraqi people—that they would destroy their own citadel of history. It would be the equivalent of thousands of Americans rampaging through the Smithsonian Institution like cannibals.” Cruikshank says flatly, “It is simply not true that the people of Baghdad looted their own museum.” [New York Times, 6/1/2003; United Press International, 6/23/2003]

Neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, whom author and media critic Frank Rich calls “a reliable unofficial spokesman for the [Bush] administration’s foreign adventures,” confidently declares that only 33 artifacts were looted from Baghdad’s National Museum, not the 170,000 originally reported stolen or destroyed (see April 13, 2003) or even the 2,000 or 3,000 now considered lost (see June 13, 2003). Krauthammer never explains how he arrives at the conclusion that 33 artifacts were taken, and does not mention the figure in subsequent columns. He does take the opportunity to lambast war critics such as Rich, who decried the looting, as indulging in “narcissism” and “sheer snobbery” typical of “Upper West Side liberalism.” Krauthammer writes that since the looting has been revealed to be less endemic than originally reported, leftist war critics have “simply moved on to another change of subject: the ‘hyping’ of the weapons of mass destruction.” [Washington Post, 6/13/2003; Rich, 2006, pp. 86]

US administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer unilaterally decides to cancel mayoral elections, scheduled for June 21, in the city of Najaf. It would have been Iraq’s first election. According to Bremer, conditions in Najaf are not yet right for an election. It would have been “premature,” he says. A senior official in Bremer’s office tells the New York Times, “The most organized political groups in many areas are rejectionists, extremists and remnants of the Baathists. They have an advantage over the other groups.” [Agence France-Presse, 6/17/2003; New York Times, 6/19/2003] In other parts of Iraq mayors are being selected by town councils elected by US-installed community delegates. [New York Times, 6/19/2003; Washington Post, 6/28/2003]

An investigation sponsored by British intelligence and headed by British defense officers and technical experts from the Porton Down microbiological research establishment determines that two trailers recently discovered in Iraq by US forces (see April 19, 2003; May 9, 2003) are not mobile biological weapons factories as has been alleged. Rather the team concludes that they are for producing hydrogen for artillery weather balloons. “They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories,” says one British scientist and biological weapons expert who has seen the trailers. “You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were—facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.” [Observer, 6/8/2003; Observer, 6/15/2003]

David Kay. [Source: Publicity photo]David Kay, just recently appointed to head the Iraq Survey Group, is given access to all the CIA’s prewar intelligence on Iraq’s weapons programs. “Now I’ll get the good stuff,” he thinks to himself. But after reviewing the CIA’s reports he realizes that the agency’s evidence is not too solid. He is disappointed to see that the mobile biological weapons trailer allegation was based on just one source—and an iffy one at that, Curveball (see Late January, 2003)—and that the US intelligence community had sided with CIA WINPAC over the Energy Department’s nuclear scientists in the aluminum tubes debate (see October 1, 2002). As he continues reading the WMD material, a favorite song of his comes to mind—Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?” [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 233-234]

Jessica Lynch being carried from a transport plane to a hospital in Ramstein, Germany, April 2, 2003. [Source: Associated Press / Baltimore Sun]The Washington Post publishes a much more exhaustively researched attempt at telling the accurate story of US Army Private Jessica Lynch’s capture, rescue, and subsequent recovery. The Post printed a dramatic tale of Lynch’s guns-blazing capture, her abuse at the hands of her captors, and the firefight that resulted in her rescue (see April 1, 2003). That story turned out to be almost entirely fictional, most likely a product of Pentagon propaganda (see May 4, 2003, May 23, 2003, and May 25, 2003). In a very different front-page story, it now attempts to tell the story directly and without embellishment. Brief Propaganda Victory - The original story, featuring Lynch emptying her M-16 into her assailants until finally succumbing to multiple gunshot wounds, quickly made Lynch into what the Post calls “the story of the war, boosting morale at home and among the troops. It was irresistible and cinematic, the maintenance clerk turned woman-warrior from the hollows of West Virginia who just wouldn’t quit. Hollywood promised to make a movie and the media, too, were hungry for heroes.” That story was quickly exposed as a fraud. This Post story, its reporters assert, is far more extensively researched: “The Post interviewed dozens of people, including associates of Lynch’s family in West Virginia; Iraqi doctors, nurses and civilian witnesses in Nasiriyah; and U.S. intelligence and military officials in Washington, three of whom have knowledge of a weeks-long Army investigation into the matter. The result is a second, more thorough but inconclusive cut at history.” At least one similarity with the original story remains, the reporters acknowledge: most of the US officials who spoke to the reporters insisted that their identities not be revealed. The Real Story of the Capture - According to military officials, Lynch indeed tried to fight her assailants, but her weapon jammed. She did not kill any Iraqis. She was neither shot nor stabbed. Her unit, the 507th Maintenance Company, fell prey to an ambush outside Nasiriyah after getting lost. Army investigators believe that Lynch and her colleagues became lost because they were not informed that the column they had been following was rerouted. Lynch was riding in a Humvee when it crashed into a jackknified US truck. She was severely injured in the crash, including multiple broken bones and compression of the spine. The other four soldiers in the Humvee were killed or mortally wounded. She was captured by Iraqi guerrillas. In what may be a continuation of the government’s attempt to inflate the tale, two US officials familiar with the Army investigation say that Lynch was mistreated by her captors but refuse to give details. Eyewitness Account - Sahib Khudher, an Iraqi farmer, saw a large US convoy of trucks, trailers, wreckers, and Humvees pass by his house before dawn on March 23. A few hours later, he saw trucks again pass his house, this time fighting off an ad hoc assault force of Iraqi irregulars in pickup trucks. The Iraqis were firing into the US vehicles and at their tires. “There was shooting, shooting everywhere,” Khudher recalls. “There were accidents, too. Crash sounds. You could see and hear the vehicles hitting each other. And yelling. Screaming. I could hear English.” Khudher was witnessing the tail end of the 507th Maintenance Company’s convoy, 18 Humvees, trailers, and tow trucks. Most of the soldiers were part of a Patriot missile maintenance crew. Missed Route Change - The 507th missed a route change and quickly became separated from their larger 3rd Infantry unit. Because of truck breakdowns, 18 vehicles of the 507th split off from the rest of their convoy, and became entirely separated. Lynch was with these vehicles, which entered Nasiriyah around 6:30 a.m. Unfamiliar with the streets, the commander became lost, and eventually ordered the convoy to attempt to turn around and backtrack. By that point, around 7 a.m., the streets were filling with Iraqis, and the commander ordered the troops to lock and load their weapons. Assault - As the convoy attempted to drive into central Nasiriyah, Iraqi forces launched an attack. The assailants were both uniformed soldiers and civilians, according to accounts by the American survivors of the assault. The attackers fired on the convoy with small arms, hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortars. The situation worsened for the Americans when an Iraqi T-55 tank appeared, and the assailants positioned sandbags, debris, and cars to block the convoy’s path. The senior military officer later described the battle as “very harrowing, very intense.” Lynch may have been one of the soldiers returning fire, but she may not have gotten off a single round: “We don’t know how many rounds she got off,” says the official. “Her weapon jammed severely.” While details are unclear, it is believed that Lynch’s vehicle broke down, and she clambered into a soft-top Humvee driven by Private First Class Lori Piestewa, Lynch’s best friend in the unit. Another occupant, Master Sergeant Robert Dowdy, pulled two more soldiers into the Humvee. Lynch rode the transmission hump between the two seat. The senior military officer says that Dowdy was encouraging his four soldiers “to get into the fight” as well as “trying to get vehicles to move and getting soldiers out of one broken-down vehicle and into another.” The four soldiers in the Humvee “had their weapons at the ready and their seat belts off,” says the senior officer. “We assume they were firing back.” [Washington Post, 6/17/2003] (Lynch will later confirm that her weapon and others’ were jammed with sand and useless.) [Time, 11/9/2003]Collision - During the firefight, a US tractor-trailer with a flatbed swerved around an Iraqi dump truck and jackknifed. As the Humvee sped towards the overturned tractor-trailer, it was struck on the driver’s side by a rocket-propelled grenade. Piestewa lost control of the Humvee and plowed into the trailer. The senior defense official calls the collision “catastrophic.” Dowdy was killed instantly, as were the two soldiers to either side of Lynch. Both she and Piestewa were severely injured. Lynch’s arm and both legs were crushed; bone fragments tore through her skin. Khudher recalls seeing a Humvee crash into a truck. Watching from a safe distance, he saw “two American women, one dark-skinned, one light-skinned, pulled from the Humvee. I think the light one was dead. The dark-skinned one was hurt.” The light-skinned woman was apparently Lynch. She and Piestewa, who was Native American, were both captured by Iraqi guerrillas. Garbled, Contradictory Reports - Understandably, the reports of the ambush in the hours after the attack were garbled, contradictory, and confused. Arabic-speaking interpreters at the National Security Agency intercepted Iraqi transmissions referring to “an American female soldier with blond hair who was very brave and fought against them,” according to a senior military officer who read the top-secret intelligence report when it came in. Some of the Iraqis at the scene said she had emptied her weapon at her assailants. Over the next few days, numerous reports are received by the commanders at US CENTCOM in Doha, Qatar. Some of the reports are relayed Iraqi transmissions concerning a female soldier. The stories are contradictory. Some say she died in battle. Others say she was wounded by shrapnel. Others say she was shot and stabbed during the firefight. The only ones to receive these reports were generals, intelligence officers, and Washington policymakers, all of whom must be cleared to read the most sensitive information the US government possesses. The initial tale of Lynch’s “fight to the death” came from these high-level officials. [Washington Post, 6/17/2003] Another possible explanation later given forth was that the Army had intercepted Iraqi radio chatter about a yellow-haired soldier from Lynch’s unit who fought bravely before falling; that soldier was later identified as Sergeant Donald Walters. Interpreters had confused the Arabic pronouns for “he” and “she” and thought the radio transmissions were about Lynch. [New York Times, 12/14/2003]Initial Treatment - Lynch and Piestewa were taken to a small military hospital in Nasiriyah, where both are initially treated for their wounds. That hospital is nothing more than a burned-out ruin today, but on the morning of Lynch’s captivity, it was the scene of frenzied activity, overwhelmed with Iraqi soldiers and irregulars fleeing, fighting, and bleeding from wounds. US soldiers were coming in from Kuwait in heavy numbers. The hospital’s director, Adnan Mushafafawi, remembers a policeman bringing in two female American soldiers about 10 a.m. Both were unconscious, he remembers, severely wounded and suffering from shock. According to their dog tags, they were Lynch and Piestewa. “Miss Lori had bruises all over her face,” he remembers. “She was bleeding from the eyes. A severe head wound.” Piestewa died soon after arriving at the hospital. Though Piestewa may have been shot, Mushafafawi says, Lynch had been neither shot nor stabbed. Mushafafawi and medical staffers cut away Lynch’s uniform, lay her on a gurney and began working on her. She had major fractures of her arm and both legs, and a minor head wound. They sutured the head wound, and gave her blood and intravenous fluids. After X-raying her fractures, they applied splints and plaster casts. “If we had left her without treatment, she would have died,” Mushafafawi says. Lynch briefly regained consciousness during the treatment, but was disoriented. “She was very scared,” he says. “We reassured her that she would be safe now.” She resisted having Mushafafawi reset her leg, he remembers. Two or three hours later, Lynch was sent to Nasirayah’s main civilian facility, Saddam Hussein General Hospital. Mushafafawi believed at the time that his hospital would be attacked by US military forces (it was overrun two days later). He had both Lynch and Piestewa’s body sent to the civilian hospital. Mushafafawi says he does not know what happened to either of the soldiers between the time they were captured and when they were brought to his hospital. Hospitalized - Lynch arrived at Saddam Hussein hospital that afternoon in a military ambulance. The doctors there were shocked to find a severely injured, nearly naked American woman, wearing heavy casts, beneath a sheet. Hospital officials say that during her time there, she was given the best possible care they could provide. They do not believe it was possible for Iraqi agents to have abused her while at the hospital. A member of Iraq’s intelligence service was posted outside the door to her room, but the staff never saw anyone mistreat her, nor did they see evidence of any mistreatment. Her condition was grave, the doctors and nurses recall, unconscious and obviously in shock. The hospital was overloaded with casualties and barely staffed; only a dozen doctors from a staff of 60 were on duty. Many nurses had not come to work either. The roads were unsafe, the electricity came and went, medical supplies were stretched thin, and casualties kept pouring in. “It was substandard care, by American standards, we know this, okay?” says Dr. Harith al-Houssona. “But Jessica got the best we could offer.” Lynch began to improve after several days of treatment. She was moved from the emergency room to an empty cardiac care unit, where she had her own room, and was tended to by two female nurses. She was in terrible pain, and was given powerful drugs. Though she was hungry, she was leery of the food being offered her, insisting that the food containers be opened in front of her before she would eat. Her mental state fluctuated. Sometimes she joked and smiled with her doctors and nurses, sometimes she would weep. “She didn’t want to be left alone and she didn’t want strangers to care for her,” Dr. Anmar Uday recalls. “One time, she asked me, ‘Why are you standing in front of me? Are you gong to hurt me?’ We said no, we’re here to help you.” Her primary nurse, Khalida Shinah, weeps herself when describing Lynch’s misery. Shinah recalls singing her to sleep and rubbing talc into her shoulders. Dr. Mahdi Khafaji, an orthopedic surgeon, says that there was more than mere sympathy and camaraderie responsible for the decision to give Lynch the best care they could. Everyone knew that the Americans would soon come for Lynch, he says, and “we wanted to show the Americans that we are human beings.… She was more important at that moment than Saddam Hussein.” Besides, he adds, “You could not help but feeling sorry for her. A young girl. An American. A prisoner. We did our best. Believe me, she was the only orthopedic surgery I performed.” The hospital staff were not the only ones interested in ensuring the Americans would be happy with Lynch’s treatment. At the time, the hospital had between 50 and 100 Iraqi fighters in or around the site at any one time, though the number steadily dwindled as US forces came ever closer. Senior Iraqi officials worked and lived out of the basement, clinics, and the doctors’ residence halls and offices. They all knew the Americans were coming, al-Houssona recalls, “and toward the end, they were most worried about saving themselves.” Suspicious Wounds - Khafaji was suspicious of Lynch’s wounds. He had trouble believing they came from an auto accident, no matter how severe. The fractures were on both sides of her body, and there was no glass embedded in her wounds. US military sources believe most if not all the fractures could have been caused by the accident. Khafaji says, “[M]aybe a car accident, or maybe [her captors] broke her bones with rifle butts or by stomping on her legs. I don’t know. They know and Jessica knows. I can only guess.” Interrogation - Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, a lawyer, says he learned about Lynch’s capture on March 27, when he went to visit his wife Iman, a nurse at the hospital. Al-Rehaief saw numerous Fedayeen in the “traditional black ninja-style uniforms that covered everything but their eyes,” as well as “high army officials there.” Al-Rehaief says one of his friends, a doctor, told him of Lynch. Curious, he peered through a glass panel into her room and, he says, “saw a large man in black looming over a bed that contained a small bandaged woman with blond hair.” The man wore epaulets on his shirt, indicating that he was a Fedayeen officer. Al-Rehaief recalls, “He appeared to be questioning the woman through a translator. Then I saw him slap her—first with the palm of his hand, then with the back of his hand.” After the Fedayeen officer left, al-Rehaief slipped into Lynch’s room and told her he would help. He left the hospital and sought out US soldiers, soon finding a group of US Marines. He told them about Lynch. (The Marines corroborate what they know of al-Rehaief’s story.) They sent him back to the hospital several times to map it out and routes in and out of the hospital. He also counts the number of Iraqi troops there. Fabrication? - While the hospital doctors and staffers believe al-Rehaief did tell the Marines about Lynch, they dispute other portions of his story. There is no nurse named Iman at the hospital, they say, and no nurse married to a lawyer. “This is something we would know,” says one nurse. Al-Houssona believes little of al-Rehaief’s story. “Never happened,” he says. As for the Fedayeen slapping Lynch in her hospital bed, “That’s some Hollywood crap you’d tell the Americans.” Al-Houssona believes al-Rehaief embellished his story for his listeners. Al-Rehaief and his wife were taken to a military camp in Kuwait, and later received political asylum. He now lives in northern Virginia, where he is working on a book for HarperCollins and a television movie for NBC about his version of events (see April 10, 2003 and After). Task Force 20 - The Special Operations unit given the assignment of rescuing Lynch, Task Force 20, is a covert Special Ops unit assigned the highest priority tasks. There was a larger reason than Lynch for that unit to be interested in the hospital: pre-mission briefings indicated that the hospital had been repeatedly visited by Ali Hassan Majeed, the infamous “Chemical Ali,” in recent days. Ground sources and images from Predator drones indicate that the hospital might be a military command post. There was every reason for Task Force 20 to go into the hospital heavily armed and taking full precautions, or as one Special Ops officer puts it, “loaded for bear.” A force of Marines, with tanks and armored personnel carriers, was ordered to mount a feint into Nasiriyah to draw off Iraqi forces near the hospital. Rescue - Around 1 a.m. on April 1, commandos in blacked-out Black Hawk helicopters, protected by AC-130 gunships, entered the hospital grounds. Marines established an exterior perimeter, and Army Rangers set up a second perimeter just outside the hospital walls. These forces were fired upon from adjacent buildings, military sources say, though the fire was light. Commandos burst into the hospital, set off explosives meant to disorient anyone inside, and made for Lynch’s room. Uday says that the doctors and staffers fled to the X-ray room, where they might be more secure. Though the soldiers quickly burst into the X-ray room, no shots were fired and no resistance was offered. “It was like a ‘Rambo’ movie,” Uday recalls. “But we were not Rambo. We just waited to be told what to do.” Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, who gave American reporters video footage of the rescue mission, says, “There was not a firefight inside of the building, I will tell you, but there were firefights outside of the building, getting in and out.” The commandos found Lynch in a private bed, lying on the hospital’s only bed used to ease bedsores. A male nurse in a white jacket was with her. One of the soldiers called out, “Jessica Lynch, we’re the United States soldiers and we’re here to protect you and take you home.” She answered, “I’m an American soldier, too.” The commandos find “ammunition, mortars, maps, a terrain model and other things that make it very clear that it was being used as a military command post,” Brooks says. It is unclear if the hospital had indeed been used as any sort of military headquarters, but it is certain that the last of the Iraqi soldiers had fled the day before. Recovering the Dead - The commandos retrieve two American bodies from the morgue. Staff members lead soldiers outside, where seven other soldiers were buried in shallow graves. They tell the soldiers that they buried the seven because the morgue’s faltering refrigeration couldn’t slow their decomposition. All nine bodies are from Lynch’s unit. Navy SEALs dug up the bodies with their hands, military officials say. Propaganda Opportunity - Within hours of the rescue, a second contingent of US tanks and trucks rolled up to the hospital. They were not there to attack anyone. Instead, CENTCOM’s public affairs office in Qatar had seen an opportunity. “We wanted to make sure we got whatever visuals were available,” a public affairs officer involved in the operation recalls. The rescue force had photographed the rescue, and Special Forces had provided video footage of Iraqi border posts being obliterated to the news media. That video footage had received extensive airplay in the US. This, the public affairs officers think, could be much bigger. Lieutenant Colonel John Robinson, a CENTCOM public affairs officer, says, “We let them know, if possible we wanted to get it, we’d like to have” the video. “We were hoping we would have good visuals. We knew it would be the hottest thing of the day. There was not an intent to talk it down or embellish it because we didn’t need to. It was an awesome story.” The Lynch story, if properly presented, could be a boon to the military’s public relations. Stories of US troops bogged down on the way to Baghdad and killed by the dozens in vicious firefights could be erased from the news broadcasts by a feel-good story of heroism and camaraderie. According to one colonel who dealt with the media in the days after the rescue, the story “took on a life of its own. Reporters seem to be reporting on each other’s information. The rescue turned into a Hollywood concept.” No one at CENTCOM ever explains how the details of Lynch’s “heroic resistance,” “emptying her gun” into her assailants, and finally “falling from multiple gunshot wounds” were given to reporters. [Washington Post, 6/17/2003]

Abu Adel, a senior tribal leader in Ramadi, Iraq, tells the Associated Press: “We are a proud people and we will not accept this humiliation. The Americans should beware the wrath of the Iraqi people.” [Associated Press, 6/17/2003]

A crowd of former Iraqi soldiers demanding back pay begin to throw rocks and press up against a convoy of US military police heading toward the arched entrance of the Republican Palace, which was the presidential compound under Saddam but became the headquarters for occupation authorities after the US invasion. At least one US soldier fires into the crowd, killing two of the protesters. [Associated Press, 6/18/2004]

US administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer describes US as occupying power in an interview with the Washington Post. “As long as we’re here, we are the occupying power. It’s a very ugly word, but it’s true.” [Washington Post, 6/18/2003]

Retired Army lieutenant general Jay Garner meets with Donald Rumsfeld to report on his experiences as former head of the American-run Iraqi civilian administration. He tells Rumsfeld that his successor, Paul Bremer, made “three terrible mistakes.” He cites the purge of Baathists from Iraq’s public sector, the disbanding of the Iraqi military, and the dismissal of an interim Iraqi leadership group that was willing to aid the US in governing Iraq in the short term. Garner claims that there is still time to “rectify” the mistakes made. Rumsfeld replies by saying, “Well, I don’t think there is anything we can do, because we are where we are… We’re not going to go back.” [Washington Post, 10/1/2006]

A Pentagon-sponsored fact-finding mission (see May 25, 2003) completes its final report on a three-week long investigation of the two trailers that were found in Iraq in April and May (see April 19, 2003; May 9, 2003). The team, led by American and British biological weapons experts, determined (see May 27, 2003) that the trailers were not intended to produce biological weapons, as top US and British government officials, including both President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, have publicly stated. According to sources interviewed by the Washington Post, members of the team were asked to alter the conclusions of the 122-page report. “The questioners generally wanted to know the same thing: Could the report’s conclusions be softened, to leave open a possibility that the trailers might have been intended for weapons?” [Washington Post, 4/12/2006]

The US occupation begins a program called the Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP). CERP utilizes seized funds from the regime of Saddam Hussein to initiate rapid, small-scale reconstruction projects. It contrasts with the massive design-build reconstruction projects being done by large firms such as Bechtel because it results in immediate, visible improvements that create grassroots support for the US military. The program involves having US military commanders meet with local Iraqi leaders to assess potential projects aimed at alleviating community problems. One of the most welcomed contributions of the CERP are the thousands of jobs that it creates. Military commanders will later say that the “benefit received from CERP funds far outweighs the amount [of funds] provided” and that “funding minor efforts such as repairs to houses and buildings are helping to stabilize areas in Iraq.” The Iraq reconstruction inspector general will later claim in a recommendation for smaller scale reconstruction projects that CERP “and similar initiatives in Iraq proved the value of relatively small, rapidly executable projects that meet immediate local needs and thereby have the salutary effect of enhancing relations with local communities.” As of September 30, 2005, it will only have received about $1.4 billion in funding. [Bowen, 7/2006, pp. 82-88, 94 ] Analysts will later find that time periods when the CERP ran out of funds were fraught with surges in violence and US troop deaths. Bremer and the CPA will be criticized by nation-building experts for their neglect of the program and for putting free market ideology and a large-scale construction projects over simpler efforts to restore basic services to Iraqis at a quick pace. [Christian Science Monitor, 1/29/2004]

In an op-ed piece published by the Wall Street Journal, Paul Bremer argues that if Iraqis are to enjoy higher living standards and political freedom, the country will need to adopt a market-based economic reform policy. He says that economic growth in Iraq will “require the wholesale reallocation of resources and people from state control to private enterprise, the promotion of foreign trade, and the mobilization of domestic and foreign capital.” [Wall Street Journal, 6/20/2003]

Paul Bremer travels to the shores of Jordan on the Dead Sea to attend the World Economic Forum and promote US reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Here, he states his goal of privatizing state-owned firms. He says that the US-led occupation will “set in motion policies which will have the effect of reallocating people and resources from state enterprises to the more-productive private firms.” [Agence France-Presse, 6/17/2003; State Department, 6/23/2003]

Former Iraqi soldiers, angry about their loss of employment one month after the order to disband was issued, say that they will begin to take up arms against the US occupation if they do not receive any financial compensation. They had previously set this day as the deadline for when the coalition must pay them. A former soldier named Tahseen Ali Hussein is quoted by the Agence France-Presse as saying, “We are all very well trained soldiers and we are armed. We will start ambushes, bombings and even suicide bombings. We will not let the Americans rule us in such a humiliating way.” [Agence France-Presse, 6/23/2003] The same day, the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority agrees to pay the soldiers (see June 23, 2003). Most of the soldiers consider the payments inadequate (see July 15, 2003).

Paul Bremer releases a statement saying that the Coalition Provisional Authority will begin making monthly payments to former members of the Iraqi military in order to pacify them (see June 23, 2003). According to Walter Slocomb, the payments will range from $50 to $150, and up to 250,000 former soldiers may be eligible to receive them. Conscripts, on the other hand, will be sent home with a single severance payment. [Christian Science Monitor, 6/24/2003]

The destruction of a British Tornado fighter plane by a US Patriot anti-missile battery (see March 23-April 2, 2003) and other similar incidents (see March 25, 2003 and April 2, 2003) prompt former Congressional investigator Joseph Cironcione to tell reporters that the Army has known of the problems with the Patriot since at least 1991, when Congress tapped him to lead an investigation of the Patriot’s performance (see Mid-1991). But, Cirincione will observe, the media impact of Patriot footage was apparently more important than its actual performance. “I saw the pictures. I thought this is amazing. This system is exceeding expectations,” Cirincione will recall of the Gulf War footage broadcast on CNN and other television networks. “And all during the war, that’s what I thought. This was what all the newscasters said it was—a Scud buster, a miracle weapon. … A lot of money started flowing into the Patriot right after the Gulf War, because everybody thought it was a success.” Cirincione discovered that the Patriot had a dismal record: “The best evidence that we found supports between two and four intercepts out of 44. About a 10 percent success rate.” In 2001, the Army finally admitted that the Patriot was not the ringing success it had claimed. And by that time, the new problem—targeting friendly aircraft as enemies—was becoming evident. A 1996 Pentagon report found that the Patriot had “very high fratricide levels.” Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Philip Coyle, who oversaw Patriot testing from 1994 through 2001, says the Army should have been aware of the problem. “I believe they were,” he will recall in 2004. “But the focus was on hitting a target. Other issues, such as friendly fire, didn’t get the same—either spending, or priority, as the first priority of hitting a target.” Cirincione agrees. “There’s a tendency in all our weapons systems to try to play up the good news and get it through its performance evaluations, and then try to fix the problems later on.… They think that it’s a problem with the system that they can fix down the line.” Those problems were never addressed, but the Army deployed Patriot batteries in Iraq anyway. Cirincione will add, “What’s so disheartening about this is the very things we warned about came to pass in this war. It’s clear that the failure to correct some of the problems that we’ve known about for 10, 12 years led to soldiers dying needlessly. To flyers, dying needlessly.” As of mid-2004, the Army had produced no reports explaining the friendly fire incidents. [Carter, 2004, pp. 52; CBS News, 6/27/2004]

Paul Bremer, the US administrator for Iraq, tells the Washington Post: “I’m not opposed to [self-rule], but I want to do it a way that takes care of our concerns…. In a postwar situation like this, if you start holding elections, the people who are rejectionists tend to win… It’s often the best-organized who win, and the best-organized right now are the former Baathists and to some extent the Islamists.” [Washington Post, 6/28/2003]

Paul Bremer asks the Pentagon to send about 50,000 more soldiers to Iraq, the equivalent of more than two divisions. The request is discussed at a National Security Council meeting but the White House is reluctant to satisfy the request. One source tells the Seattle Times that the “White House is aware that Bremer wants them. They’re not happy about it. They don’t want a formal request because then, politically, there’s fallout.” Rumsfeld denies that the Department of Defense has been asked to provide “anything that has not been supplied.” [Seattle Times, 7/2/2003]

US administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer tells the Washington Post in an interview,
“I’m not opposed to [elections in Iraq], but I want to do it a way that takes care of our concerns… Elections that are held too early can be destructive. It’s got to be done very carefully.” [Washington Post, 6/28/2003]

In a BBC interview, US administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer says, “We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or, if necessary, kill them until we have imposed law and order upon this country.” [Guardian, 6/30/2003]

Officials at the CIA station in Baghdad ask agency managers at headquarters for information and training on detainee interrogations, but receive little in response. After the station agrees to interrogate the most important detainees in order to gain information about the growing insurgency, it asks headquarters for training for its officers, so that they can perform the interrogations correctly. It also requests written guidelines in July. However, headquarters does nothing and this refusal to act leads to heated arguments between Baghdad station and headquarters. For example, in one videoconference in the fall the deputy station chief begins yelling at headquarters staffers, demanding that they provide the written guidelines. The response of the agency’s Near East division chief is to tell Baghdad station boss Gerry Meyer (see May 18, 2006) that his deputy is becoming “too strident.” No guidelines will arrive before the Abu Ghraib scandal breaks (see April 28, 2004). Neither does headquarters send a lawyer to the Baghdad station for some time. Initially, the station gets its legal advice on an informal basis from CIA or military lawyers who happen to be passing through Baghdad. No agency lawyer is stationed in Baghdad until January 2004. [Risen, 2006, pp. 144-145]

At the request of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the Federal Reserve Bank sends the CPA $391.2 million in cash during this month. The money is drawn from the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) and special US Treasury accounts containing revenues from sales of Iraqi oil exports, surplus dollars from the UN-run oil-for-food program, and frozen assets that belonged to the government of Saddam Hussein. [US Congress, 2/6/2007 ]

The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) visits the Nasr munitions plant where the Iraqis used to manufacture 81mm artillery rockets. The plant’s inventory includes a large supply of 81mm aluminum tubes. ISG investigators conclude that the aluminum tubes confiscated in Jordan two years earlier (see July 2001) had been purchased by the Iraqis for use as artillery rocket bodies, not centrifuge rotors as alleged by the Bush administration. As reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn will explain in their book Hubris, “ISG investigators questioned the Iraqi plant managers. They also interrogated the senior official who had overseen Saddam’s military industrial commission. All the Iraqis told a consistent story: the rockets had been falling short. The problem was the propellant. But changing the propellant—the obvious solution—wasn’t an option. The propellant was produced at a facility run by a friend of one of Saddam’s sons. So to avoid interfering with the flow of business to a regime crony, the engineers devised a Rube Goldberg solution: lower the mass of the rockets and use tubes that had a higher strength than otherwise necessary, that was why the Iraqis had been using the Internet to procure tubes with unusually precise specifications (The whole thing reminded [David] Kay of some of the Pentagon’s own procurement messes.) ‘We had this down,’ Kay later said. ‘The system was corrupt.’” Kay will also say of the tubes fiasco, “The tubes issue was an absolute fraud.” [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 306-307] Some observers find it telling that US forces never attempted to secure the Nasr facility or its inventory of tubes. “They’re not acting as if they take their own analysis seriously,” Joseph Cirincione, director of the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, will later tell the Washington Post. “If they were so worried about these tubes, that would be the kind of sensitive equipment you’d think the administration would want to seize, to prevent it from going somewhere else—Iran, Syria, Egypt.” [Washington Post, 10/26/2003]

Hamish Killip, a British army officer and biological weapons expert working with the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group, inspects the alleged mobile biological weapons labs that were found by US forces in April (see May 9, 2003) and May (see April 19, 2003) and is immediately skeptical. “The equipment was singularly inappropriate,” he later recalls. “We were in hysterics over this. You’d have better luck putting a couple of dust bins on the back of the truck and brewing it in there.” The trailers were clearly built for the purpose of producing hydrogen. [Los Angeles Times, 11/20/2005]

Count Hans von Sponeck, the UN’s former co-coordinator in Iraq and former UN under-secretary general, during a trip to Iraq, visits two factories near Baghdad which US surveillance equipment has identified as possible biological and chemical weapons production sites. The first plant he visits is the Al-Dora plant, which at one time had produced vaccines for foot-and-mouth disease, but which was destroyed by the UNSCOM weapons inspectors. Hans von Sponeck, who is not an expert in biological or chemical weapons, says of the Al-Dora plant: “‘There is nothing. It is in the same destroyed status. It is a totally locked up institution where there is not one sign of a resumed activity.” Von Sponeck also visits the Al-Fallouja factory, where he witnesses the production of “pesticides, insecticides and material for hygienic purpose in households, on very minor scale,” reports CNN. “Most of the buildings are destroyed,” he tells the news network. [CNN Europe, 7/13/2002]

CPA Officials Posing with $2 Million in Cash [Source: US Congress. House Committee on Government Reform] (click image to enlarge)The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) awards a $16.84 million sole-source contract to a small McLean, VA -based firm called Custer Battles to provide security at Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). It will later be alleged by former employees of the firm that Custer Battles bilked the CPA by diverting airport personnel to other jobs. An investigation by the Washington Monthly will later discover that the company had very few qualifications for the job and managed the contract in an extremely disorganized manner. One witness describes how the CPA paid the company with a wheelbarrow filled with $2 million in cash. Colonel Richard Ballard, an inspector general for the coalition forces, becomes extremely dismayed with the company’s conduct after examining its performance. His investigation is continuously obstructed by the company which argues that it has no legal obligation to cooperate because it is being paid with Iraqi assets and not money from the Pentagon. He discovers that employees often possess inadequate equipment and training. He is especially appalled by the employees’ “refusal to open the cargo doors of lorries to inspect.” Ballard makes known his concern that the CPA has exercised inadequate oversight of the contract and writes that a “formal audit would likely conclude fraud and potentially gross negligence in the area of contract oversight.” [Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, 7/30/2004, pp. 50 ; Washington Monthly, 7/2006]

President Bush, responding to the news of the continuous and mounting stream of attacks on coalition troops, says: “There are some who feel that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring ‘em on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation.” In reference to the administration’s state goal of peace in the Middle East, Bush says: “I mean, there are people there who still hate. They hate Israel. They hate the idea of peace. They can’t stand the thought of a peaceful state existing side-by-side with Israel. And they may be willing to attack. And what we must continue to do is to reject that kind of thought.” A delegation of senators visiting Iraq mirrors the president’s message. “This coalition of armed forces is never, ever going to give in, irrespective of what is thrown at it,” says Republican Sen. John W. Warner. “It will never give in until freedom replaces the tyranny of Saddam Hussein and his regime.” Democrat Sen. Carl Levin says: “We need the patience to stay the course.” However, Jay Garner, replaced by Paul Bremer as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, noted earlier in the week that it “appears now that it’s taken on a guerrilla war nature, so we might need more” troops. [New York Times, 7/2/2003]

Statements

“There are some who feel that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring ‘em on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation.”
— July 2, 2003 [New York Times, 7/2/2003]

At a press briefing in Baghdad, Paul Bremer says that Iraq should consider privatizing its state-owned sectors and allowing foreign investment into its oil industry soon, even if that means doing so before Iraq has an elected government. He says that the soon-to-be-appointed Iraq Governing Council will need to reassure private investors by taking a friendly stance toward foreign capital. “Privatization is obviously something we have been giving a lot of thought to,” he says. “When we sit down with the governing council… it is going to be on the table. The governing council will be able to make statements that could be seen as more binding and the trick will be to figure out how we do this. Everybody knows we cannot wait until there is an elected government here to start economic reform.” [Reuters, 7/8/2003]

The Iraqi Governing Council is created and its 15 members sworn in. The members were selected by Paul Bremer on July 11 after tense negotiations between the Coalition Provisional Authority and a number of Iraqi opposition groups. Thirteen of the members are Shiites, five are Kurds, five are Sunni Muslims, one is an Assyrian Christian, and another, one of three women on the council, is a Turkoman. Most of the members are Iraqi exile leaders or Kurdish chieftains who worked with the US and Britain prior to the invasion. More than half of the members have connections to, or were members of, the Iraqi National Congress. The new governing council will have the authority to appoint some officials and diplomats, review laws, and approve budgets. But Paul Bremer may veto any of the council’s proposals. [New York Times, 7/13/2003; Cox News Service, 7/14/2003]

A senior Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) official announces plans to waive an existing Iraqi law requiring foreign investors in the telecommunications industry to subcontract at least 51 percent of their work to Iraqi companies. The CPA justifies the move saying that the waiver would encourage investment by reducing the risk for foreign telecom companies. The waiver will expire in two years. [Revenue Watch Institute, 2003, pp. 4 ; Financial Times, 7/18/2003]

The New York Times’s Judith Miller, an outlet for information planted in the media by the Bush administration in he run-up to the Iraq war (see December 20, 2001, August 2002, September 8, 2002, and September 18, 2002), now reports the number of suspected WMD sites in Iraq as 578—a figure far lower than the 1,400 she had reported during the first hours of the war (see March 19-20, 2003). Miller blames the US failure to find any WMD on Pentagon ineptitude: “chaos, disorganization, interagency feuds, disputes within and among various military units, and shortages of everything from gasoline to soap.” Deeper in the story, she writes, “To this day, whether Saddam Hussein possessed such weapons when the war began is unknown.” [New York Times, 7/20/2003; Rich, 2006, pp. 101]

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in Iraq as part of what the New York Times calls a “carefully choreographed visit” to that country to point up the record of brutality compiled by former dictator Saddam Hussein, tells reporters that Iraqi WMD are no longer the “core reason” why the US invaded Iraq, or why it occupies that country. “I’m not concerned about weapons of mass destruction,” he says. “I’m concerned about getting Iraq on its feet.” With the US’s help, Wolfowitz says, Iraq can build a “magnificent” democracy. And apparently without a sense of irony, Wolfowitz says foreign nations should not meddle in Iraq’s business. “I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq,” he says. “Those who want to come and help are welcome. Those who come to interfere and destroy are not.” [New York Times, 7/20/2003]

Slate reporter Jack Shafer lambasts New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s record of error as the Times’s primary chronicler of the claims for Iraqi WMD. Miller has just written an article backing away from her previous claims (see July 20, 2003), but blaming the failure to find WMD on everything from “chaos [and] disorganization” to “flawed intelligence[,] interagency feuds,” and the wrong choice of people to head the US searches. Shafer responds: “Judith Miller finds everybody associated with the failed search theoretically culpable except Judith Miller. This rings peculiar because Miller, more than any other reporter, showcased the WMD speculations and intelligence findings by the Bush administration and the Iraqi defector/dissidents. Our WMD expectations, such as they were, grew largely out of Miller’s stories.” He notes that Miller’s reports were largely based on assertions from sources affiliated with Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC), and writes, “If reporters who live by their sources were obliged to die by their sources… Miller would be stinking up her family tomb right now.” Shafer goes on to note that Miller’s words were always carefully selected to ensure that the sources, not Miller herself, painted a picture of Iraq teeming with WMD. “[I]f Miller got taken by her coveted sources, so did the reading public, and the Times owes its readers a review of Miller’s many credulous pieces,” Shafer writes. Since the Times has yet to provide such a review, Shafer says, he has done some of the initial work for it. 'The Renovator, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri' - Shafer begins with an Iraqi civil engineer, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, who, thanks to the INC (see December 17, 2001), provided Miller with the information required for stories describing the secret renovation of facilities to store and develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons (see December 20, 2001). Shafer notes that al-Haideri, who now lives in the US, has boasted of his willingness to return to Iraq once Saddam Hussein is out of power; he suggests that the Times send him back to Iraq “where he can lead them on a tour of the 20 sites and 20 installations” that he claims housed WMD. 'The Pseudonymous Ahmed al-Shemri' - In September 2002, Miller and her colleague Michael Gordon wrote that Iraq was continuing to develop, produce, and store chemical agents in secret mobile and fixed weapons laboratories, many underground, in defiance of UN weapons sanctions (see September 8, 2002). The allegations, made as part of a much broader story, were based on the allegations of Ahmed al-Shemri, the admitted pseudonym of an Iraqi who claimed to have been “involved” in chemical weapons production in Iraq before his defection in 2001. “All of Iraq is one large storage facility,” al-Shemri told Miller. He also told her of the existence of large, secret labs in Mosul, those labs’ production of 5 tons of liquid VX nerve agent, and their ability to produce far more if requested. And, he told her that Iraq had created a new solid form of VX that makes decontamination difficult. Russian and North Korean scientists were assisting the Iraqis, al-Shemri asserted, and told of stockpiles of “12,500 gallons of anthrax, 2,500 gallons of gas gangrene, 1,250 gallons of aflotoxin, and 2,000 gallons of botulinum throughout the country.” Shafer suggests that al-Shemri “drop his pseudonym to make his background more transparent and lead the Times to the Mosul lab.” Making the Case for the White House - On September 13, 2002, Miller and Gordon printed a story titled “White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons” (see September 13, 2002). The story related the White House’s claims of Iraq’s attempt to purchase aluminum tubes to be used in building nuclear missiles, its development of mobile biological laboratories, its attempt to buy poison gas precursors, and the secret development of chlorine gas at Fallujah and three other locations. Also, the article noted, Iraq was constructing missiles in violation of the 1991 cease-fire agreement, was conducting prohibited missile research, and was rebuilding a destroyed facility once used to build long-range missile engines. Shafer suggests that the Times send a delegation of reporters and experts to the sites noted in the article, saying, “Maybe the Times can find evidence that supports or discredits the administration’s claim.” 'Khidir Hamza, Nuclear Mastermind' - Miller has written extensively of the claims of former Iraqi nuclear bomb expert Khidir Hamza (see July 30, 2002), who defected in 1994. Perhaps her most influential story was printed on September 18, 2002 (see September 18, 2002), where she reported Hamza’s claims that Iraq was within two to three years of mass-producing centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium. Shafer suggests that Hamza “take the Times on an Iraqi atomic tour.” Proclaiming the Defectors' Accuracy - In October 2002, Miller wrote that al-Haideri and Hamza complained that US intelligence was not taking them seriously. She quoted Chalabi and Pentagon adviser Richard Perle’s enthusiastic support for the two defectors’ claims, along with their vociferous attacks on the CIA, and wrote: “The INC has been without question the single most important source of intelligence about Saddam Hussein.… What the agency has learned in recent months has come largely through the INC’s efforts despite indifference of the CIA.” Shafer writes: “Either the INC was wrong or the CIA was wrong. If the INC was wrong, the Times should feed Perle’s words back to him with a fork and spoon.” Miller wrote another story quoting an administration defender of the defectors in January 2003, this time Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Shafer says “[t]he Times should review the credibility of all the Iraqis who defected to Miller. Who are the defectors? What did they tell the United States? How much of it was true? How much was blarney?” Atropine Auto-Injectors - In November 2002, Miller wrote that, according to White House officials, Iraq had ordered “large quantities” of atropine auto-injectors (see November 12, 2002). Atropine is an antidote to sarin and VX, two lethal nerve agents. Shafer says “[t]he Times should track the atropine order to the source, if possible, to see if the request was in preparation for a chemical weapons attack.” Russian Smallpox Allegations - In December 2002, Miller wrote that a Russian scientist may have provided a virulent strain of smallpox to Iraqi scientists (see December 3, 2002). Shafer notes that it is clear Miller does not know who the source for the allegation was, and the Times should now reinvestigate the story. Miller's Mobile Exploitation Team Scoop - Shafer writes that Miller’s “biggest scoop” was an April 20, 2003 article titled “Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert” (see April 20, 2003 and April-May 2003). Miller reported on an Iraqi scientist in the custody of a US Mobile Exploitation Team (MET) in search of WMD. The scientist said that Iraq destroyed large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons just before the invasion, and he led the MET to buried precursor materials from which illegal weapons can be made. Moreover, the scientist alleged that Iraq sent its remaining stockpiles of WMD to Syria in the mid-1990s, where they remain hidden to this day. Iraq provided some of those weapons to al-Qaeda, and has focused heavily on researching new and more powerful weapons. Miller wasn’t allowed to name the precursor element the scientist had named, but wrote that it could be used to create a toxic agent banned under chemical weapons treaties. She was not allowed to speak to the scientist himself, nor could she reveal his name. And, she noted, she agreed to allow the military to review her story, and held off publishing it for three days. In return, the military allowed her to look at the scientist from a distance, as he pointed at spots in the desert where he said the precursor elements were buried. One day after the article appeared, Miller went on PBS, where she called her reporting the “silver bullet” in the WMD search. The next day, she published another article announcing a “paradigm shift” by investigators as a result of what they’d learned from the Iraqi scientist. But neither Miller nor any of the METs actually found anything concrete as a result of the scientist’s allegations. She later admitted that the “scientist” was actually a military intelligence officer, but continued to stand by his original allegations. Shafer suggests that Miller persuade the military to allow her to identify the so-called “precursor” substance, and explain the deceptive portrayal of a military intelligence officer as a scientist familiar with Iraqi WMD programs. Impact and Consequences - Shafer says that the most important question about Miller is, “Has she grown too close to her sources to be trusted to get it right or to recant her findings when it’s proved that she got it wrong?” He continues: “Because the Times sets the news agenda for the press and the nation, Miller’s reporting had a great impact on the national debate over the wisdom of the Iraq invasion. If she was reliably wrong about Iraq’s WMD, she might have played a major role in encouraging the United States to attack a nation that posed it little threat. At the very least, Miller’s editors should review her dodgy reporting from the last 18 months, explain her astonishing credulity and lack of accountability, and parse the false from the fact in her WMD reporting. In fact, the Times’ incoming executive editor, Bill Keller, could do no better than to launch such an investigation.” [Slate, 7/25/2003]

It is reported that 161 US troops have been killed in action in Iraq since the start of the war. The guerrilla attacks on US forces have averaged 12 a day. Forty-seven US soldiers have died from hostile fire since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1, 2003 (see May 1, 2003). Fourteen soldiers have been killed in the last eight days. [CBS News, 7/25/2003]

In a briefing to the president and other top officials, Kay says that he has found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and says the disputed trailers (see April 19, 2003 and May 9, 2003) were probably not mobile biological factories, as the CIA and White House had claimed (see May 28, 2003 and May 29, 2003). Present at the briefing are Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, Andrew Card, and other White House aides. Kay’s briefing provokes little response from his audience. Describing the president’s reaction, Kay later says: “I’m not sure I’ve spoken to anyone at that level who seemed less inquisitive. He was interested but not pressing any questions. .. I cannot stress too much that the president was the one in the room who was the least unhappy and the least disappointed about the lack of WMDs. I came out of the Oval Office uncertain as to how to read the president. Here was an individual who was oblivious to the problems created by the failure to find WMDs. Or was this an individual who was completely at peace with himself on the decision to go to war, who didn’t question that, and who was totally focused on the here and now of what was to come?” [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 310]

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice offers the discovery of aluminum tubes as proof of Hussein’s intentions to develop nuclear weapons on PBS’ NewsHour with Jim Lehrer: “[H]e had… an active procurement network to procure items, many of which, by the way, were on the prohibited list of the nuclear suppliers group. There’s a reason that they were on the prohibited list of the nuclear supplies group: magnets, balancing machines, yes, aluminum tubes, about which the consensus view was that they were suitable for use in centrifuges to spin material for nuclear weapons.” [NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, 7/30/2003]

The US Department of Commerce prepares a memo for the president concerning the US-UK Energy Dialog, a bilateral initiative that was established during the April 2002 meeting of Prime Minister Blair and President Bush to “enhance coordination and cooperation on energy issues” (see April 6-7, 2002). The memo states: “Current forecasts for the oil sector put global demand by 2030 at about 120 million barrels per day (mbd), which is roughly 45 mbd higher than today. While recognizing that the increasing role of Russia and other non-OPEC producers, a large proportion of the world’s additional demand will likely be met by the Middle East (mainly Middle East Gulf) producers. They hold over half of current proven reserves, exploration and production costs are the lowest in the world, and production in many mature fields in the OECD area is likely to fall. To meet future world energy demand, the current installed capacity in the Gulf (currently 23 mbd) may need to rise to as much as 52 mbd by 2030.” [Muttitt, 2005]

Defending the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tells ZDF television that there was “very strong intelligence” that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction “Going into the war against Iraq, we had very strong intelligence. I’ve been in this business for 20 years. And some of the strongest intelligence cases that I’ve seen, key judgments by our intelligence community that Saddam Hussein… had biological and chemical weapons….” [ZDF German Television, 7/31/2003]

The US says it is using Mark-77 firebombs in Iraq. Mark-77s are incendiary weapons that have a “remarkably similar” effect to that of napalm. The main difference between the two weapons is that Mark-77 firebombs use kerosene-based jet fuel whereas napalm used gasoline. The newer firebombs are also said to be more difficult to extinguish but to have less of an impact on the environment. [San Diego Union-Tribune, 8/5/2003; Agence France-Presse, 8/8/2003] But critics say the difference is minute. Technically, the name, “napalm,” refers to the combination of naphthalene and palmitate which was used only in the very earliest versions of such bombs (see 1942). Later firebombs, such as the napalm used in Vietnam, was made from polystyrene instead. Yet these bombs continued to be referred to as napalm, or “Napalm-B.” Therefore critics say that by substituting jet fuel for gasoline, the military had just developed a more advanced napalm bomb. John Pike, director of the military studies group GlobalSecurity.Org, explains: “You can call it something other than napalm but it is still napalm. It has been reformulated in the sense that they now use a different petroleum distillate, but that is it.” [Sydney Morning Herald, 8/8/2003; Sydney Morning Herald, 8/9/2003; Independent, 8/10/2003]

At the request of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the Federal Reserve Bank sends the CPA $808.2 million in cash during this month. The money is drawn from the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) and special US Treasury accounts containing revenues from sales of Iraqi oil exports, surplus dollars from the UN-run oil-for-food program, and frozen assets that belonged to the government of Saddam Hussein. [US Congress, 2/6/2007 ]

Map of the US-occupied “Green Zone” inside Baghdad. [Source: Representational Pictures]There is a growing realization within the Department of Defense that the militant resistance in Iraq against the US and British occupation has been underestimated. An internal Pentagon document notes: “Their ability to attack convoys, other vulnerable targets and particular individuals has been the result of painstaking surveillance and reconnaissance. Inside information has been passed on to insurgent cells about convoy/troop movements and daily habits of Iraqis working with coalition from within the Iraqi security services, primarily the Iraqi Police force which is rife with sympathy for the insurgents, Iraqi ministries and from within pro-insurgent individuals working with the CPA’s so-called Green Zone…. Politically, the US has failed to date. Insurgencies can be fixed or ameliorated by dealing with what caused them in the first place. The disaster that is the reconstruction of Iraq has been the key cause of the insurgency. There is no legitimate government, and it behooves the Coalition Provisional Authority to absorb the sad but unvarnished fact that most Iraqis do not see the Governing Council as the legitimate authority. Indeed, they know that the true power is the CPA.” The report emphasizes that intelligence on the people involved in Iraq’s domestic uprising is insufficient. “Human intelligence is poor or lacking… due to the dearth of competence and expertise…. The intelligence effort is not coordinated since either too many groups are involved in gathering intelligence or the final product does not get to the troops in the field in a timely manner.” [New Yorker, 5/24/2004] The study is a contributing factor in the decision by the civilian leadership of the Pentagon to seek “actionable intelligence” from detainees being held in Iraq’s detention facilities (see August 31, 2003-September 9, 2003). [New Yorker, 5/24/2004]

President Bush appoints Thomas Foley to the new position of director of private-sector development for the interim US authority in Iraq. Foley, a corporate turnaround expert and multi-millionaire investor, attended Harvard Business School with President Bush and served as the Connecticut finance chairman for Bush’s 2000 campaign. Foley’s task will be to help open Iraq up to foreign investment and to privatize more than 200 state-owned industries, including mining, chemical, cement, and tobacco companies. Excluded from the privatization plan will be Iraq’s oil, utility, and insurance industries. [Financial Times, 8/8/2003; Washington Post, 10/2/2003] The targeted industries currently employ close to 500,000 workers, or three to four percent of the country’s total workforce. Many Iraqis are unhappy with the plan. They say only an elected Iraqi government should make such decisions. According to Fareed Yasseen, adviser to Governing Council member Adnan Pachachi, the assets will probably be sold off to foreign firms and Iraqi merchants who grew wealthy off their connections to Saddam Hussein’s regime, since they are the only ones who will be able to afford to make the purchases. He warns, “If you have a situation where state assets are sold to foreigners or result in large layoffs, this will lead to popular unrest.” [USA Today, 8/9/2007]

In an op-ed piece published by the Guardian of London, Ghazi Sabir-Ali, the former chairman and managing director of Iraq’s North Oil Company in Kirkuk, describes how Iraqis brought the country’s oil industry back to life within weeks of the First Gulf War ending. He compares this to the current situation where Iraq is “now importing petrol for the first time in 60 years.” He says the Iraqis who helped rebuild Iraq after the first Gulf War are “capable, as they were in 1991, of planning and executing the necessary repairs to our battered country, if they are given a free hand.” He notes also, “There is no need for foreign companies to take control. Iraqi oil revenue should go to Iraqis, who should then be left in peace to set their country to rights.” [Guardian, 8/1/2003]

The US military reopens the Abu Ghraib prison facility in Baghdad, which had been the main prison used by Saddam Hussein. Lt. Col. Jerry L. Phillabaum, a reservist who commands the 320th Military Police Battalion, is put in charge of the prison. He reports directly to Army Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski. [Washington Post, 5/9/2004]

After heavy criticism from military families and Democratic presidential candidates, President Bush backpedals from his decision to support a plan that would have reduced the pay of the nearly 160,000 US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The plan proposed to eliminate the $75 per month “imminent danger pay” and the $150 per month “family separation allowance.” [Democracy Now!, 8/18/2003]

Custer Battles is awarded a “cost plus” contract in Iraq to provide security and logistical support for the Iraqi Currency Exchange, a CPA-created agency charged with replacing the country’s old currency with a new currency. Under the terms of the contract, Custer Battles is to be paid for all of its operational expenses, plus a 25 percent markup for overhead and profit. According to a lawsuit that is later filed against the company, Custer Battles uses a complex network of shell companies to inflate the fee it gets to over 60 percent of its actual costs. In one notorious incident, the company bills the CPA for the use of at least one forklift that it does not even own. The forklift belonged to Iraqi Airways and was confiscated by Custer Battles employees. Paint was used to cover up the Iraqi Airways insignia on the machine. [Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, 7/30/2004, pp. 79 ; Grayson and DiMuro, 8/26/2004, pp. 3, 15-17, 21 ]

The CIA’s Baghdad station chief, Gerry Meyer (see May 18, 2006), files an Aardwolf, or time-critical situation report, about the crisis in the area in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of the UN offices in that city (see August 29, 2003). The report says that the UN bombing was part of a strategy by a new and bold insurgency to discredit and isolate the US-led coalition, and warns that insurgents and terrorists have the capability to carry out many more attacks against “soft targets.” The insurgency is increasingly dangerous, threatens to erase early progress made by the US, and could actually overwhelm occupation forces. The report also says that there are two strands of violence, one from foreign fighters and one from Iraqi insurgents. In addition, it predicts that the capture of Saddam Hussein will not end the violence as he appears not to be in control of it. Some in the Bush administration think the report is too negative and L. Paul Bremer, administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, attaches a note to it downplaying the worsening conditions in Iraq. [Risen, 2006, pp. 141-142; Wilson, 2007, pp. 157] Meyer will file another such report in November (see November 10, 2003).

Members of the US House Committee on Government Reform travel to Mosul, Iraq and talk with Major General David Petraeus, commander of the US Army 101st Airborne Division. Petraeus tells them how he was responsible for fixing a cement plant in northern Iraq. US engineers told him it would cost $15 million to restore the plant. Instead, he gave the job to Iraqis, who managed to fix the plant with only $80,000. [US Congress, 9/30/2003, pp. 2, 4-5 ]

Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi provides the Supreme Council for Oil Policy with a set of guidelines upon which the council is to base its petroleum policy. According to the guidelines, fields currently in production should continue to be developed by the Iraq National Oil Company (INOC), but development of all other fields should be contracted to private oil firms through production sharing agreements (PSAs). Eighty oilfields are known to exist in Iraq, but only 17 of them are currently being developed. Under the policy advocated by Allawi, the remaining 63 would be operated by the oil companies. New fields, according to Allawi, should be developed exclusively by the private sector. [Deutsche Presse-Agentur (Hamburg), 9/13/2003; Agence France-Presse, 9/26/2003; Muttitt, 2005] One critic of this proposed policy will later note that since Iraq’s 17 known fields “represent only 40 billion of Iraq’s 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves, the policy to allocate undeveloped fields to foreign companies would give those companies control of 64 percent of known reserves. If a further 100 billion barrels are found, as is widely predicted, the foreign companies could control as much as 81 percent of Iraq’s oil; if 200 billion are found, as the Oil Ministry predicts, the foreign company share would be 87 percent. Given that oil accounts for over 95 percent of Iraq’s government revenues, the impact of this policy on Iraq’s economy would be enormous.” [Muttitt, 2005] Another one of Allawi’s recommendations is that the INOC should be partially privatized. Allawi also feels that Iraqis should avoid spending time negotiating with the oil companies, and instead agree to whatever terms the companies will accept, with a possibility of renegotiating the contracts at a later date. [Deutsche Presse-Agentur (Hamburg), 9/13/2003; Agence France-Presse, 9/26/2003; Muttitt, 2005]

Philip Carroll, the chief adviser to the new Iraqi government’s oil ministry, and Gary Vogler, another adviser, resign and are replaced by Rob McKee, a former vice president of ConocoPhillips, and Terry Adams of BP Oil. [Muttitt, 2005; Harper's, 4/2005, pp. 75]

The Republican-connected firm New Bridge Strategies partners up with Diligence-Iraq to provide security for companies wanting to do business in Iraq. Diligence vets local employees and partners, reviews potential investments, provides daily intelligence briefs, and supplies security for company personnel and assets. Its fees are based on the level of risk involved. Diligence was formed in 2000 by two former intelligence officers, Nick Day and Mike Baker. Day, an expert in Islamic militant groups, is a former MI5 agent, and Baker was a CIA covert field operations officer specializing in “counterterrorism, counternarcotics, and counterinsurgency operations.” The company employs about 200 people—mainly former members of the US Special Forces, New Zealand’s equivalent of the Green Berets, and the Iraqi military—and has offices in London, the US, Geneva, and the Middle East. Its annual gross revenue is around $10 million. The company works hand-in-hand with New Bridge Strategies, whose chairman, Joe M. Allbaugh, formerly served as director of FEMA under President Bush. In addition to being Diligence-Iraq’s chief executive officer, Baker also serves on New Bridge’s advisory board member. Diligence received its initial financial backing from the Republican-connected lobbying firm Barbour, Griffith & Rogers (BGR). Like New Bridge, Diligence shares office space at BGR’s office in Washington DC. BGR also provided Diligence with its well-connected chairman Richard Burt, former US ambassador to Berlin, as well as its impressive advisory board. One of the advisers is Ed Mathias of the Carlyle Group. [New York Times, 9/30/2003; Washington Post, 10/2/2003; New York Times, 10/6/2003; Financial Times, 12/12/2003; Independent, 2/8/2004]

At the request of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the Federal Reserve Bank sends the CPA $400.0 million in cash during this month. The money is drawn from the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) and special US Treasury accounts containing revenues from sales of Iraqi oil exports, surplus dollars from the UN-run oil-for-food program, and frozen assets that belonged to the government of Saddam Hussein. [US Congress, 2/6/2007 ]

US authorities in Iraq issue a $20 million contract to provide the new Iraqi police force with new revolvers and Kalashnikov rifles. The Iraqi Governing Council is highly critical of the contract and questions why the Iraqi police couldn’t be provisioned with the tens of thousands of weapons that the US military has been confiscating every month from Saddam Hussein’s abandoned arsenals. [New York Times, 10/4/2003]

Iraqi oil minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum tells the Financial Times that Iraq is preparing plans for the privatization of the country’s oil sector. He says he supports the “full privatization of downstream installations, such as refineries, but [says] he would back production-sharing contracts upstream,” the newspaper reports. He adds that US, possibly European, oil companies will be given priority. But he also says the decision will not be made until Iraq has an elected government. “The new elected government at the end of the transitional period will decide this issue,” he tells the Times. “The Iraqi oil sector needs privatization, but it’s a cultural issue,” he explains. “People lived for the last 30 to 40 years with this idea of nationalism.” Al-Ulum—a US-trained petroleum engineer who lived in London from 1992 until the overthrow of Hussein—was part of a working group organized by the State Department’s Future of Iraq Project before the invasion (see December 20-21, 2002). [Financial Times, 9/5/2003]

Retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, formerly head of the US Central Command, criticizes the Bush administration’s occupation strategy for Iraq, saying that the administration has never put together a coherent strategy, never created a plan for achieving its goals, and has not allocated the resources needed to achieve those goals. “There is no strategy or mechanism for putting the pieces together,” he says, and so “we’re in danger of failing.” Speaking to several hundred Marine and Navy officers and others, Zinni, who was badly wounded in Vietnam, says: “My contemporaries, our feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice. I ask you, is it happening again?… We can’t go on breaking our military and doing things like we’re doing now.” A focus of his criticism is the choice by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to have the Defense Department, and not the State Department, oversee postwar efforts in Iraq. “Why the hell would the Department of Defense be the organization in our government that deals with the reconstruction of Iraq?” he asks. “Doesn’t make sense.” Another area of criticism is the Bush administration’s cavalier treatment of the United Nations, particularly in failing to secure a UN resolution that several nations said was a prerequisite for their contributing to the peacekeeping force (see October 21, 2002, October 27, 2002, November 8, 2002, December 31, 2002, February 5, 2003, and March 25, 2003). “We certainly blew past the UN,” he says. “Why, I don’t know. Now we’re going back hat in hand.” Zinni is given a warm reception by his audience, some of whom buy recordings of his remarks to share with friends and fellow soldiers. [Washington Post, 9/5/2003]

Peter Jennings. [Source: Washington State University]ABC News anchor Peter Jennings says in an interview: “We have been criticized, a little bit to my surprise, by people who think I was not enough pro-war. That is simply not the way I think of this role. This role is designed to question the behavior of government officials on behalf of the public. I think people who have done this and all jobs in journalism have believed that.… Are we out of step with the administration because we do not comport completely to their political point of view? So they criticize us for it. It goes with the territory, and if we get a groundswell we begin to look at ourselves. ‘Are we? Are we not?’ I don’t think the public realizes how much soul-searching goes on in news organizations about what is the right thing to do.” [USA Today, 9/8/2003]

Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer is under pressure to explain how he intends to transfer power in Iraq from the CPA and the hand-picked Iraqi Governing Council (IGC—see July 13, 2003), especially in light of Bremer’s recent, unilateral cancellation of national elections (see June 28, 2003). Bremer chooses an unusual venue to respond: the op-ed pages of the Washington Post. In a column entitled “Iraq’s Path to Sovereignty,” Bremer writes that national elections are “simply… not possible” at this time. Instead, the IGC will develop a plan for drafting and ratifying a new constitution. [Washington Post, 9/8/2003; Roberts, 2008, pp. 129-130] This will be followed by elections and, finally, complete transfer of the CPA’s powers to the new Iraqi government. Bremer gives no hint of a timetable, and implies that the process will not end quickly. Influential Iraqis, and US allies such as France and Germany, are disturbed by the prospect of an essentially indefinite occupation. Senior Bush officials, particularly National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, will later claim to have been blindsided by Bremer’s plan. New York Times columnist David Brooks, a conservative with excellent sources within the White House, will later write that Bremer “hadn’t cleared the [Post] piece with his higher-ups in the Pentagon or the White House” (see December 2003 and After). However, Bremer’s column is consistent with a Bush statement on Iraqi governance the day before, and with the text of a resolution the administration will try to push through the UN Security Council in October. It is unclear what, if any, authorization Bremer has for his decision, but there are manifest disagreements in the top ranks of White House officials as to the wisdom of Bremer’s planning (see November 15, 2003). [Roberts, 2008, pp. 129-130]

Christiane Amanpour. [Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]Well-known CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour is asked on a talk show if “we in the media, as much as in the administration, drank the Kool-Aid when it came to the [Iraq] war.” Amanpour replies, “I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled. I’m sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did.” Asked if there were stories not reported, she replies, “It’s not a question of couldn’t do it, it’s a question of tone. It’s a question of being rigorous. It’s really a question of really asking the questions. All of the entire body politic in my view, whether it’s the administration, the intelligence, the journalists, whoever, did not ask enough questions, for instance, about weapons of mass destruction. I mean, it looks like this was disinformation at the highest levels.” A Fox News spokeswoman says of Amanpour’s comments, “Given the choice, it’s better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda.” [USA Today, 9/14/2003]

In a speech to the nation commemorating the second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, President Bush promises that no more troops are needed in Iraq. The 130,000 currently deployed are enough to handle the mission, he says. Besides, “now some 60,000 Iraqi citizens under arms, defending the security of their own country, are now active, with more coming.” The Iraqi Governing Council, which he calls “25 leaders representing Iraq’s diverse people,” is almost ready to take over governance of their country (see September 8, 2003), Bush says. Viewership for the speech is half the number of people who watched Bush’s January State of the Union address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), and polls indicate that support for the Iraqi occupation is sagging among Americans. [Rich, 2006, pp. 102-103]

Former ambassador Joseph Wilson pens his second op-ed for the San Jose Mercury News, titled “Seeking Honesty in US Policy.” Wilson writes that the Bush administration is dragging the country “down a rabbit hole,” a reference to Alice in Wonderland, “all the while trying to convince the American people that life in newly liberated Iraq is not as distorted as it seems.” He accuses President Bush and his top officials of attempting to “misrepresent reality—and rewrite history—to mask its mistakes” in Iraq. If the US wants to fight terrorism, as Bush claims, it needs to go elsewhere, Wilson asserts. 'Dangerous, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy' - But, Wilson writes, “[b]y trying to justify the current fight in Iraq as a fight against terrorism, the administration has done two frightening things. It has tried to divert attention from Osama bin Laden.… And the policy advanced by the speech is a major step toward creating a dangerous, self-fulfilling prophecy and reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the facts on the ground.” Powerful Insurgency, Growing Terrorist Presence - Wilson notes that the US is fighting an ever-growing insurgency in Iraq, largely composed of “an angry but not yet defeated Sunni Muslim population who, although a minority in Iraq, had been in power for a century.” He notes that the US is “beginning to face terrorists there, but it is our own doing. Our attack on Iraq—and our bungling of the peace—led to the guerrilla insurgency that is drawing jihadists from around the Muslim world. The ‘shock and awe’ campaign so vividly shown on our television screens (see March 19, 2003) has galvanized historic Arab envy, jealousy, and resentment of the United States into white-hot hatred of America.” Redefining Rationale for War - Instead of correcting its mistakes and pursuing terrorists where they actually congregate, Wilson says, “the administration is trying to redefine why we went to Iraq, because we have accomplished so little of what we set out to do—and severely underestimated the commitment it would take to deal with the aftermath of war.” No longer does the administration make its claims that Iraq had WMD that pose a threat to the Middle East or even the US itself. Now it claims that we invaded Iraq because it had WMD programs (see July 9, 2003). Wilson writes, “In other words, we’re now supposed to believe that we went to war not because Saddam’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction threatened us, but because he had scientists on his payroll.” The cost in American lives and tax dollars has been staggering and continues to rise virtually unchecked. Large sections of Iraq are in chaos. Imposed Democracy, Security for Israel - “The truth is, the administration has never leveled with the American people on the war with Iraq,” Wilson writes. Powerful members of the administration wanted war no matter what, Wilson writes, because it was always their intention to overthrow Saddam Hussein and impose democracy on Iraq as a first step towards democratizing the entire Middle East. And at worst, some believed that even if the experiment in imposed democracy failed, Israel would be more secure because it would be surrounded by small, less powerful Arab states too busy bickering with one another to form a solid bloc in opposition to it. Playing It Straight - Wilson concludes: “[B]efore we can hope to win back international trust or start down a truly new path in Iraq, the administration has to start playing it straight, with the American people and with the world. Recent administration statements, including the president’s speech, suggest that it still prefers to live in a fantasy world.” [Mercury News (San Jose), 9/14/2003]Scowcroft Won't Share Op-Ed with White House - Wilson sends the editorial to White House adviser Brent Scowcroft and asks if he will share it with administration officials; Scowcroft laughingly demurs, saying that he is in enough trouble with the administration already (see March 8, 2003). [Wilson, 2004, pp. 375]

John Zogby. [Source: John Zogby]Vice President Dick Cheney tells the press that a newly released poll shows “widespread support” for US occupiers among Iraqi civilians. A recently released Zogby poll has “very positive news in it in terms of the numbers it shows with respect to the attitudes to what Americans have done,” Cheney says. “One of the questions it asked is: ‘If you could have any model for the kind of government you’d like to have’—and they were given five choices—‘which would it be?’ The US wins hands down. If you want to ask them, do they want an Islamic government established, by two-to-one margins they say no, including the Shi’a population. If you ask how long they want Americans to stay, over 60 percent of the people polled said they want the US to stay for at least another year.” Cheney is blatantly misrepresenting the poll results. According to the poll, 49 percent of Iraqis want a democracy guided by Islamic law. Twenty-four percent want a clerical-dominated Islamic state. Only 21 percent want a secular democracy. Over 60 percent of respondents want US and British troops out within a year; among Sunnis, the figure is over 70 percent. Half of those polled say the US will damage their country over the next five years; only 36 percent believe the US will help. John Zogby writes in the Los Angeles Times of the poll, “One thing is clear: the predicted euphoria of Iraqis has not materialized.” [New Republic, 11/20/2003]

Vice President Dick Cheney appears on Meet the Press and tells host Tim Russert that Iraq’s support for al-Qaeda was “clearly official policy.” As evidence, he cites the alleged meeting between Mohamed Atta and Iraqi diplomat Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani (see April 8, 2001). Cheney also insists that the two trailers found in Baghdad (see April 19, 2003 and May 9, 2003) were mobile biological weapon factories, even though he was told by David Kay, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, that that was probably not the case (see July 29, 2003). [Meet the Press, 9/14/2003; Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 313]

The Coalition Provisional Authority provides US Congress with a justification for a request of $20.3 billion for reconstruction projects in Iraq. The report—which leaves many questions unanswered—describes 115 projects. Less than 25 of them mention employing Iraqis or using Iraqi resources. [US Congress, 9/30/2003, pp. 2, 4-5 ]

Paul Bremer signs Order 37, titled “Tax Strategy for 2003,” reducing the tax rate on corporations from a high of 40 percent to a flat rate of 15 percent. The income tax rate is also capped at 15 percent. “The highest individual and corporate income tax rates for 2004 and subsequent years shall not exceed 15 percent,” the order says. [Coalition Provisional Authority, 9/19/2003 ] The flat tax has long been a goal of economic conservatives and was planned for Iraq in pre-war planning sessions with Iraqi exiles. According to one Middle East expert interviewed by the Washington Post, the new tax system “has almost no support from other members of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.” The new tax law will take effect in January. In the meantime, reports the Post, “Bremer has abolished all taxes except for real estate, car sales, gasoline and the pleasantly named ‘excellent and first class hotel and restaurant tax.’ Even while leaving these Hussein-era levies in place, Bremer exempted his coalition authority, the armed forces, their contractors, and humanitarian organizations. Exempting occupation personnel leaves only the Iraqis to pay taxes, as well as journalists, business people, and other foreigners.” [Washington Post, 11/2/2003]

US administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer signs CPA Order 39 setting terms for foreign investment that are far more favorable than those that existed under the previous government. The order eliminates Iraq’s longstanding restrictions on foreigners’ rights to own property and invest in Iraqi companies. It grants foreign investors the right to fully own Iraqi enterprises and transfer 100 percent of all profits outside of Iraq. Prior Iraqi law, which allowed citizens of Arab countries to invest in Iraq, required that a certain percentage of investment profits be reinvested in Iraq. Order 39 also prohibits the government from establishing any terms for investment that would favor Iraqi investors over foreign investors. The order also states that in cases “where an international agreement to which Iraq is a party provides for more favorable terms with respect to foreign investors undertaking investment activities in Iraq, the more favorable terms under the international agreement shall apply.” [Coalition Provisional Authority, 9/19/2003 ]

US administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer signs Order 40, the “Bank Law,” allowing foreign banks to acquire stakes in formerly state-owned banks. Six foreign companies are permitted to fully take over Iraqi banks, while other banking firms can purchase up to a 50 percent stake in local banks. [Coalition Provision Authority, 9/19/2003 ; Washington Post, 9/21/2003]

At the annual World Bank/IMF meeting in Dubai, Iraq’s nominal finance minister Kamel al-Gailani announces Bremer’s shock therapy program of economic reforms. The announcement comes two days after Bremer signed a number of orders opening up Iraq’s economy to foreign investment (see September 19, 2003, September 19, 2003, and September 19, 2003). Collectively, the orders allow foreign investors to acquire 100 percent ownership of Iraqi assets in any sector except oil production and refining, give foreign investors equal legal standing with local firms, and allow them to repatriate all profits made in Iraq without any requirements for local re-investment. The laws also cap income and corporate taxes at 15 percent and slash tariffs down to 5 percent, with the exception of tariffs on food, drugs, books, and other humanitarian imports, which can be imported duty-free. Al-Gailani says these “measures will be implemented in the near future and represent important steps in advancing Iraq’s reconstruction effort.” As an article in Economist magazine will note, the changes, which “bear the signature of Paul Bremer… and the imprimatur of the American consultants it has hired to frame economic policies,” represent “a radical departure for Iraq.” The article—titled “Let’s all go to the yard sale”—calls these reforms “the kind of wish-list that foreign investors and donor agencies dream of for developing markets.” The caption of an image accompanying the article reads, “If it all works out, Iraq will be a capitalist’s dream.” But the magazine also acknowledges that there will be resistance to these reforms. “Given the shock and awe expressed by many Baghdad businessmen at the scale of the changes, it is not clear that such a future regime would be able to resist pressures to reimpose protectionism.” It also predicts that the rapid overlay of this legal framework over Iraq’s existing economic system will create disparities. “The instant discarding of 40 years of national-socialist commercial culture is likely to create serious distortions,” the magazine says. [New York Times, 9/21/2003; Daily Telegraph, 9/22/2003; Economist, 9/27/2003]

Victoria “Torie” Clarke, the Pentagon’s former public relations secretary who developed the Pentagon’s Iraq propaganda operation (see May 2001), joins CNN as a political and policy analyst. Her propaganda operation relied on retired military officers to serve as network analysts, promoting the administration’s Iraq policies and touting the occupation as a success. [New York Times, 9/23/2003] Several months later, Clarke will also join Comcast Communications, the nation’s largest cable television corporation, as its senior adviser for communications and government affairs. [PRWatch, 12/15/2003]

Members of Congressman Henry A. Waxman’s staff interview two members of the Iraqi Governing Council. They state that Iraqi firms could be hired for reconstruction projects at one-tenth the amount being charged by US firms. Their claim is corroborated by the Coalition Provisional Authority’s (CPA) own justification (see September 17, 2003) for the $20 billion reconstruction supplemental. The CPA states that when work is done by Iraqi companies the “cost of construction is 1/10th of US standard per sq. ft. in general construction.” [US Congress, 9/30/2003, pp. 3-4 ]

The US administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, speaks with President Bush during a dinner party. Discussing the insurgency in Iraq, Bremer warns Bush, “We’re up against a growing and sophisticated threat.” In his 2006 book My Year in Iraq, Bremer will write that at this time, the US only has “about half the number of soldiers we need… here.” [New York Times, 4/20/2008]

Department of Defense officials ask Congress not to renew a temporary increase in the Family Separation Allowance (FSA) and Imminent Danger Pay (IDP) for deployed forces that had been enacted in April. Instead, Defense suggests raising the Hardship Duty Pay for troops deployed only in Iraq and Afghanistan. David Chu, the department’s top personnel official, says that the April raises were like “using a sledgehammer to hit a small nail.” The Pentagon’s intent to rollback the FSA and IDP reignites a controversy that had sprung up during the summer (see Summer 2003) when it was first revealed that the White House supported the Defense Department’s plan to save money by cutting back on the two programs. [Stars and Stripes, 10/4/2003] The final National Defense Authorization bill, which is passed by Congress in November, rejects the Pentagon’s recommendations and renews the pay increases. [Sun Herald (Biloxi), 11/8/2003]

Fox analyst Paul Vallely. [Source: The Intelligence Summit]The Pentagon sends a group of retired military generals and other high-ranking officers—part of its team of “independent military analysts” (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond) on a carefully arranged tour of Iraq (see Summer 2003). The idea is to have the analysts counter the negative images being reported from Iraq about the upsurge in violence from the burgeoning insurgency. The Pentagon also wants the analysts to present a positive spin on Iraq in time to bolster President Bush’s request to Congress for $87 billion in emergency war financing. The group includes four analysts from Fox News, the Pentagon’s go-to media outlet for promulgating its propaganda and spin, one analyst from CNN and ABC, and several prominent members of research groups whose opinion articles appear regularly in the editorial pages of the largest US newspapers. The Pentagon promises that the analysts will be given a look at “the real situation on the ground in Iraq.” Two Very Different Views of Reality - While the situation is rapidly deteriorating for the US—the American administrator, L. Paul Bremer, later writes that the US only has “about half the number of soldiers we needed here,” and has told Bush, “We’re up against a growing and sophisticated threat” at a dinner party that takes place on September 24, while the analysts are in Iraq (see September 24, 2003)—the story promoted by the analysts is starkly different. Their official presentation as constructed on a minute-by-minute basis by Pentagon officials includes a tour of a model school, visits to a few refurbished government buildings, a center for women’s rights, a mass grave from the early 1990s, and a tour of Babylon’s gardens. Mostly the analysts attend briefings, where one Pentagon official after another provide them with a very different picture of Iraq. In the briefings, Iraq is portrayed as crackling with political and economic energy. Iraqi security forces are improving by the day. No more US troops are needed to combat the small number of isolated, desperate groups of thugs and petty criminals that are spearheading the ineffective insurgency, which is perpetually on the verge of being eliminated. “We’re winning,” a briefing document proclaims. ABC analyst William Nash, a retired general, later calls the briefings “artificial,” and calls the tour “the George Romney memorial trip to Iraq,” a reference to former Republican governor George Romney’s famous claim that US officials had “brainwashed” him into supporting the Vietnam War during a tour there in 1965. Yet Nash, like the other analysts, will provide the talking points the Pentagon desires to his network’s viewers. Pentagon officials worry, for a time, about whether the analysts will reveal the troubling information they learn even on such a well-groomed and micromanaged junket, including the Army’s use of packing poorly armored Humvees with sandbags and Kevlar blankets, and the almost laughably poor performance of the Iraqi security forces. One Fox analyst, retired Army general Paul Vallely, later says, “I saw immediately in 2003 that things were going south.” But the Pentagon has no need to worry about Vallely or any of the other analysts. “You can’t believe the progress,” Vallely tells Fox News host Alan Colmes upon his return. Vallely predicts that the insurgency would be “down to a few numbers” within months. William Cowan, a retired Marine colonel, tells Fox host Greta Van Susteren, “We could not be more excited, more pleased.” Few speak about armor shortages or poor performances by Iraqi security forces. And all agree with retired general Carlton Shepperd’s conclusion on CNN: “I am so much against adding more troops.” 'Home Run' - The Iraq tour is viewed as what reporter David Barstow will call “a masterpiece in the management of perceptions.” Not only does it successfully promote the administration’s views on Iraq, but it helps fuel complaints that “mainstream” journalists are ignoring what administration officials and war supporters call “the good news” in Iraq. “We’re hitting a home run on this trip,” a senior Pentagon official says in an e-mail to the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers and Peter Pace. The Pentagon quickly begins planning for future trips, not just to Iraq but to Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay (see June 24-25, 2005) as well. These trips, and the orchestrated blitz of public relations events that follow, are strongly supported by the White House. Countering 'Increasingly Negative View' of Occupation - Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita will later explain that a “conscious decision” was made to use the analysts to counteract what Di Rita calls “the increasingly negative view of the war” coming from journalists in Iraq. The analysts generally have “a more supportive view” of the administration and the war; and the combination of their military expertise and their tremendous visibility make them ideal for battling what Di Rita and other Pentagon and administration see as unfairly negative coverage. On issues such as troop morale, detainee interrogations, inadequate equipment, and poorly trained Iraqi forces, Di Rita will say the analysts “were more likely to be seen as credible spokesmen.” Business Opportunities - Many of the analysts are not only in Iraq to take part in the Pentagon’s propaganda efforts, but to find out about business opportunities for the firms they represent. They meet with civilian and military leaders in Iraq and Kuwait, including many who will make decisions about how the $87 billion will be spent. The analysts gather inside information about the most pressing needs of the US military, including the acute shortage of “up-armored” Humvees, the billions needed to build new military bases, the dire shortage of translators, and the sprawling and expensive plans to train Iraqi security forces. Analysts Cowan and Sherwood are two of the analysts who have much to gain from this aspect of their tour. Cowan is the CEO of a new military firm, the wvc3 Group. Sherwood is the executive vice president of the firm. The company is seeking contracts worth tens of millions of dollars to supply body armor and counterintelligence services in Iraq. The company has a written agreement to use its influence and connections to help Iraqi tribal leaders in Al-Anbar province win reconstruction contracts from the Americans. “Those sheiks wanted access to the CPA,” Cowen later recalls, referring to the Coalition Provisional Authority. And he is determined to provide that access. “I tried to push hard with some of Bremer’s people to engage these people of Al-Anbar,” he recalls. Fox military analyst Charles Nash, a retired Navy captain, works as a consultant for small companies who want to land fat defense contracts. As a military analyst, he is able to forge ties with senior military leaders, many of whom he had never met before. It is like being “embedded” with the Pentagon leadership, he will recall. He will say, “You start to recognize what’s most important to them…. There’s nothing like seeing stuff firsthand.” An aide to the Pentagon’s chief of public relations, Brent Krueger, will recall that he and other Pentagon officials are well aware of their analysts’ use of their access as a business advantage. Krueger will say, “Of course we realized that. We weren’t naïve about that…. They have taken lobbying and the search for contracts to a far higher level. This has been highly honed.” (Di Rita will deny ever thinking that analysts might use their access to their business advantage, and will say that it is the analysts’ responsibility to comply with ethical standards. “We assume they know where the lines are,” he will say.) [New York Times, 4/20/2008]

John Maguire, a CIA official with experience of Iraqi issues, leaves the agency’s headquarters staff to take up a position at the CIA station in Baghdad. The exact position he fills in Baghdad is unknown. [Suskind, 2008, pp. 371-372]

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, frustrated with Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer’s lack of cooperation and coordination with her office (see September 8, 2003 and December 2003 and After), forms the Iraq Stabilization Group (ISG) to oversee Bremer and settle disputes between the Defense and State Departments in governing Iraq. [Roberts, 2008, pp. 130] According to unnamed White House officials, the ISG originated with President Bush’s frustration at the lack of progress in both Iraq and Afghanistan. “The president knows his legacy, and maybe his re-election, depends on getting this right,” says an administration official. “This is as close as anyone will come to acknowledging that it’s not working.” Defense Department officials deny that the ISG is designed to take power away from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: “Don recognizes this is not what the Pentagon does best, and he is, in some ways, relieved to give up some of the authority here,” says one senior Pentagon official. In reality, both Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell are giving up some control over the reconstruction efforts to the White House, specifically to the National Security Council. Rice will oversee four coordinating committees, on counterterrorism efforts, economic development, political affairs in Iraq and media messaging. One of her deputies will run each committee, assisted by undersecretaries from State, Defense, and the Treasury Department, as well as representatives from the CIA. The counterterrorism committee will be run by Frances Fragos Townsend; the economic committee by Gary Edson; the political affairs committee by Robert Blackwill; and the communications committee by Anna Perez. [New York Times, 10/6/2003] In May 2004, the Washington Post will report that the ISG is dysfunctional and ineffective almost from the outset; within months, all but Blackwill have been reassigned (Perez will leave Washington for a job with NBC), and a search of the White House Web site will find no mention of the ISG later than October 2003. [Washington Post, 5/18/2004]

Army Pfc. John D. Hart telephones his parents in Bedford, Massachusetts and complains that he feels unsafe patrolling in his company’s unprotected soft-skinned Humvees which do not have bulletproof shielding or even metal doors. A week later, the 20-year-old paratrooper and another soldier, David R. Bernstein, are killed when their vehicle is hit with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades in Taza outside the northern city of Kirkuk. The driver of the vehicle, Specialist Joshua Sams, will later explain to the Boston Globe that Bernstein had bled to death after being struck by a bullet that ripped through the Humvee. [MSNBC, 4/15/2003; Boston Globe, 10/20/2003; Boston Globe, 3/8/2004]

Approximately 600 sick or injured members of the US Army Reserves and National Guard are in “medical hold” at Fort Stewart where they are kept “in rows of spare, steamy and dark cement barracks in a sandy field” while doctors review their cases to determine how sick or disabled they are and whether or not they are eligible to receive benefits. Many of the soldiers in medical hold complain that they have been languishing there for “months” and that the conditions are “substandard.” Some soldiers also claim that the Army is trying to refuse them benefits on grounds that their injuries and illnesses are due to a pre-existing condition. Willie Buckels, a truck master with the 296th Transportation Company, explains to a reporter how he feels about the Army’s treatment of the soldiers: “Now my whole idea about the US Army has changed. I am treated like a third-class citizen.” [United Press International, 10/17/2003; CNN, 10/19/2003; United Press International, 10/20/2003; Coastal Courier, 10/22/2003]

Acting Secretary of the Army Les Brownlee claims that the Army has ordered as many “up-armored” vehicles as its contractors can produce, but says that they will not be ready until mid-2005. But Brian T. Hart, whose 20-year-old son was killed in a soft-skinned Humvee (see October 2003), investigates the secretary’s claim and learns that the armor manufacturers are not at full production. He takes this information to Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) who then helps him pressure the Army to speed up production and move the date that they will be available up to January. [Boston Globe, 3/8/2004]

At the request of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the Federal Reserve Bank sends the CPA $464.0 million in cash during this month. The money is drawn from the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI)and special US Treasury accounts containing revenues from sales of Iraqi oil exports, surplus dollars from the UN-run oil-for-food program, and frozen assets that belonged to the government of Saddam Hussein. [US Congress, 2/6/2007 ]

San Diego Business Address of North Star Consultants, Inc. [Source: NBC News]North Star Consultants, Inc. wins a $1.4 million contract to review the Coalition Provisional Authority’s internal controls for managing Iraq’s funds and provide the CPA with a written evaluation. The small firm is not a certified public accounting firm as is required by both UN Security Council Resolution 1483 (see May 22, 2003) and the CPA’s Regulation Number 2 (see June 10, 2003). [US Congress, 2/6/2007 ] The firm is so small that it operates out of a private home near San Diego. [MSNBC, 2/17/2005] A 2004 audit performed by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction will find that “North Star Consultants did not perform a review of internal controls as required by the contract. Consequently, internal controls over DFI disbursements were not evaluated. In addition, the Comptroller verbally modified the contract and employed the contractor to primarily perform accounting tasks in the Comptroller’s officer.” [Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, 7/28/2006, pp. 7 ] A single Northstar employee will reportedly use spreadsheets, not accounting software, to track the $20 billion that the CPA will spend on Iraq’s behalf between April 2003 and June 28, 2004. Of that amount, $12 billion is in cash (see June 25, 2004). [MSNBC, 2/17/2005]

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